A/N: This is my first multi-chapter story after a good number of one-shots. New format for me, so feedback is most welcome. It's intended to be complex mind-game for the boys (and for readers!), and features much timeline hopping - which will be explained when the story is completed (I promise!); in the meantime, let the date-stamps be your guide. I can't predict how long this story will go as there is much to be explored, but when it is finished, I will mark it as COMPLETE. In the meantime - I hope you enjoy! I will post updates as often as RL allows. Thanks for reviews! [NOW COMPLETE]

"Never Let Me Go"

Now

"Dean? Dean—hey!"

It was the eyes. Always the eyes, with Dean.

He built walls, strong walls, but those who knew him best, those very few who knew him best, knew to look into the eyes to find the truth—and the treasure.

Sam knew his brother. Knew him better even than their father ever had, he was certain, because their father only ever wanted two things from his eldest: Obedience. Perfection.

Dean was far from perfection. Sam knew that. But he knew, too, that Dean had tried harder than anyone on earth to meet the expectations of John Winchester.

"Dean!"

Sam had loved his father. He came to it late, that realization, because for too long, in those desperate years when a boy struggles to become a man, he resisted. Rebelled. Refused to become what his father desired. And left.

Then, just when he was truly old enough, responsible enough—in the way of hunters, that is—to begin to understand the challenges his father dealt with on a daily basis . . . well, then John Winchester was dead.

And Sam had never known him.

Not truly, as a man might. He knew him from the limited viewpoint of younger son who had lost the formative years of the transition from boyhood to manhood. He'd left at eighteen. Had not rediscovered his father again until he was halfway to twenty-three. And then, in less than a year, his father was dead.

But Dean . . . Dean had known their father very well indeed. Never had he resisted, rebelled, or refused. He was what their father had made, taking the clay and bone at the age of four and working it, shaping it, firing it, to the age of twenty-seven.

Sam loved his brother more than life itself. And if Dean was what their father had created, well, then Sam loved John Winchester every bit as much.

It was the eyes. Always, the eyes.

"Dean!"

Sam had never known their mother. But he had seen photographs. Had heard their father, now and again, talk about Mary, whom Sam knew as "Mom" only from how Dean described her, because Mary had died when Sam was six months old. He knew that he himself bore John's stamp upon him in the dark hair, darkish eyes, tanned skin . . . but mostly in the dimples. Deep dimples whenever he smiled. Just like his father.

Dean lacked the dimples. Dean was all Mary: the distinct clarity in the architecture of facial bones, the full lips, the expressive eyes. Long-lidded, liquid, sea-green eyes. For all he could be a ferocious competitor, even a predator, and indisputably all alpha male, he was still his mother's son, and there was a refinement in the angles of his face that was different from Sam's, from their father's.

Mary had been dead for years. While she certainly inhabited Sam, she lived on most significantly in her oldest son.

Yet it was in those eyes, now, this moment, as Sam looked upon them, that he saw an emptiness, an apartness, that was not of the earth he knew. And it terrified him.

His brother's body was present. Conscious. His mind was—elsewhere.

"Dean! Dammit . . . can you hear me?"

# # #

Four Days Earlier

"Sam! Down!"

And Sam dropped.

No hesitation. Not for an instant. Dean said "Down!" and Sam followed orders.

He never questioned such orders from Dean. Just as Dean had never questioned them from their father.

"Sonuvabitch!" That, too: Dean.

Sam threw himself flat, belly-down, protecting his head with clasped hands, tensed against the blast from the shotgun practically on top of him. He closed his eyes tightly.

And that was why he never saw what took his brother.

# # #

Two days. Two days Dean had been missing. A frantic Sam had searched the desert wilderness of the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix where they'd hunted a chupacabra. He worked the land in a grid pattern, dragged back dense creosote bushes, sagebrush, looked beneath the massive spreading crowns of palo verde and mesquite trees. He dodged sentinel saguaro cactus, tripped over prickly pear, avoided like the plague the dangerous cholla called "jumping cactus" because it loosed sections of thorny limbs into human flesh or clothing if one barely brushed it. Sam had learned the hard way that cholla thorns were many and hooked, and ridding oneself of an attached chunk required care and a comb, not a hand attempting to knock it away. Because then the broken limb attached itself to the hand.

Snake holes. Vermin burrows. Flaky soil a mix of sand, pebble, and dust. The heat was nearly unbearable. Those who lived in the Arizona desert told visitors never to go a'hunting in the heat of high summer—but none of them knew what the Winchesters hunted. Sure, they'd gone out at night beneath the light of a full moon, but Sam hunted by day now—hunted his brother by day—because it was easier to see beneath a bright sun than under the waning moon when one was looking for a lost person. Or even a body.

God. Don't let it be a body.

Not Dean's.

Please/please/please, not Dean's body.

# # #

A day later he found him. Sam fell to his knees at his brother's side, felt for a pulse at once. Found one, felt the surge of relief so powerful his hands trembled. "Hey! Hey, Dean . . ."

Dean was barely conscious, sprawled beneath a low-branched palo verde tree. He was sunburned, filthy, lips cracked, fingernails torn, hands stippled with scratches and scrapes.

He lay on his left side. Sam turned him over carefully. His clothing and boots suggested he had fallen, even dragged himself along. Though Sam would do a full triage exam when they were back at the motel, there were no apparent broken bones, and other than being dirty, a little scratched, his face bore no wounds. Where he wasn't sunburned he was deathly pale, and caked with dried sweat. Stains down his shirt front suggested he'd vomited.

They'd hunted in the Southwest before and knew the rules of how to survive in triple-digit heat. But monsters didn't always play by the rules. Dean was a couple of miles from where Sam had last seen him, and he was without his duffel, which Sam had found and returned to the car. He'd located shade, which probably saved his life, but his condition suggested he'd had no water since he'd been taken.

For his search, Sam had backpacked in their first aid kit and a few hot weather supplies. A quick check with the ear thermometer showed Dean's temperature at 103.1 High, but not in fatal heat stroke range; Sam thought it more likely heat exhaustion. He stripped Dean down to his boxer-briefs, sloshed water over him from head to toe, broke out the chemical coldpacks and placed them at armpits, beneath his neck and the small of his back, at his groin. He then and only then uncapped the electrolyte solution, lifted Dean's head, and placed the bottle at his lips.

"Just a little," he said. "Just a little for now. Swallow, Dean. A couple of sips. Don't want you to throw it all up. We'll take it slow. Come on, Dean. Swallow."

Dean didn't even attempt to speak. Fluid ran down his chin, onto his throat, washing away caked dirt. He blinked twice, stirred a bit, choked, then took two swallows.

"Good. Good, Dean. A little more. Couple more sips. Doin' good."

When half the bottle was gone, Dean stirred again, finally spoke. The word was hoarse, slurred, but recognizable. "S-S-Sammy . . ."

"Yeah. Yeah, I've got you. You're okay, Dean. Listen, I'm going to pour more fluids into you, check your temp again, and if you're going the right direction I'll go get the Impala. I've gotta get you out of here, into some a/c. Right now, though, I'm gonna soak you down. Lie back a minute, okay?"

Sam settled Dean's head back against the ground, checked the cold packs, then wadded up Dean's tee and long-sleeved shirt, soaked them with water, spread the wet clothing over his brother's chest and thighs.

"Half-assed evaporative cooling," Sam noted, "but it works. Okay, more fluids." Again he lifted, cradled the back of his brother's skull. "Don't gulp. Just sips. Go slow."

But Dean was a little stronger now, a shade more alert, and he wanted more than Sam allowed him. One trembling hand closed over Sam's, pressed the bottle back toward his mouth. He managed two gulping swallows before Sam pulled the bottle away. "Puking is not going to help you, Dean."

Dean strung two words together that suggested what Sam might do to himself.

"Anatomically impossible." But Sam grinned nonetheless, relieved to hear the rejoinder. "Okay, let me check your temp again."

"Dude . . . I'm wet . . . "

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Feels wet, is what it feels. Damn, Sammy, what are you doing to my ear?"

"Checking your temp."

"In my ear . . .?"

He didn't think Dean was entirely coherent, was probably confused, which went hand-in-hand with heat exhaustion. "It's an ear thermometer. Remember? Hospitals use them now. Though of course I could go with a rectal version, if you like."

A shiver coursed down Dean's body, but Sam didn't know if it was in response to the rectal thermometer imagery or the coldpacks.

"Okay, you're down a degree. Good job. Listen, the car's not far, maybe a half-mile. I'll bet that's probably where you were trying to get to. Almost made it, too. I'm leaving another bottle of fluids with you . . ." Sam wrapped Dean's right hand around it . . . "plus our backup cell, though reception's a little iffy, and I'll be right back. Got that? Dean?"

". . . yeah . . ."

Sam dug out a metal signaling mirror, rose, hung it by a cord around a tree branch. Years of hunting gave him a sound sense of direction, but it never hurt to add a little insurance. The sun stood high overhead, and the metallic glint off the mirror would bring him back to Dean if he got off-course.

"I'm gonna drive the car right up to you," Sam said, "and I don't want any complaints about sagebrush and creosote getting stuck in the undercarriage."

"Don't you scratch her paint!"

Maybe Dean wasn't confused after all, or maybe care for his car superseded even self-preservation. Sam grinned as he turned westward. "Shut up and drink, bro."

# # #

2001

"Why, Sammy? "

Sam shook his head. It was a sadness in his soul, that Dean was so surprised. "If you even have to ask, you'll never understand."

"It's not a bad life—"

He couldn't help himself: it was raw response to pure emotion. "It's a terrible life, Dean! Oh, I get it—it's 'the family business.' But Dad made it that way. Not us. Not you and me."

It wasn't a bar, though Dean would have preferred it, Sam knew, because his baby brother was only eighteen and therefore not 'legal.' So they sat in a diner on the southwest corner of Lexington and Main, let the waitress take away their empty plates, and sucked down soft drinks in a booth in the back of the place.

"Look, Sammy . . . " Dean leaned forward, curling abdomen against the table's edge as if physical closeness might make a difference, ". . . if you just need some time away, a break, maybe Dad would—"

Sam wasn't buying the appeal and cut him off. "Dad would what? Take us to Disneyland?" He shook his head, tone bitter. "First of all, he wouldn't . . . well, maybe, yeah, if it was haunted . . . but that's not what this is about. I want a life, Dean! I want to go to college."

Frowning, Dean shook his head. "We have a life, Sammy. We're helping people."

He knew better, but sometimes his brother seemed so dense. "There are other ways to help people, Dean. Cops. Doctors. Firefighters . . . any number of other professions. And they at least pay a living wage. They at least have benefits. What do we get for the Winchester way of helping people?—nothing! No pay, no thanks, no health plan, no 401K—"

Dean's tone shifted from exasperated bewilderment into something much harder. "And that's what you want, Sam? Health and dental bennies? A retirement plan?"

Why could his brother not see it? "That's what people do, Dean! Normal people! It's not wrong if I want to be normal!"

Dean was clearly perplexed. Not stupid; just so focused he could not comprehend another way. "But we're not, Sam. We're not normal. Winchesters just aren't."

He so badly wanted his big brother to understand. But maybe he couldn't. Or wouldn't. Maybe Dean was so entrenched in their father's training that he couldn't break away, couldn't be his own man.

And so he said that, because he meant it—and because he wanted Dean to see it for what it was. "Don't you want to be your own man someday, instead of Dad's puppet? Why don't you go to school, Dean? What's stopping you?"

The tone was tighter than Dean probably wished it to be. "Maybe because I'm a high school dropout, Sam."

Sam leaned forward. "You got your GED. You could get into a junior college, go for two years, then switch to a 4-year university—"

"Sam."

"You're not stupid, Dean. Hell, you could be a mechanical engineer. You've got the math skills, the know-how . . . there are classes you would ace."

"Sam—"

"You could probably test out of some of the early boring classes, just based on your life experience. You could—"

Dean brought a fist down and bounced the tall, pebbled plastic glasses against the wooden tabletop. "Sam, stop it! I'm not going to college. That may be your dream, but it's not mine, okay? I'm doing what I want to do."

"You're doing what Dad wants you to do. Dean—you're twenty-two. Most guys your age—"

"I'm not 'most guys,' Sam! And I don't want to be."

"Well, I am. And I do. And I'm going to college." Sam pulled the #10 envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, pressed it down against the table. "I've been accepted to Stanford. It's a really good school, Dean. One of the best. And I made it."

Dean's eyes flicked to the bent envelope, then lifted back to Sam's. "How the hell did you get in? Don't you need a parent's consent?"

"Not when you're eighteen. And I have references. I scored really well on my SATs and a lot of my high school teachers encouraged me to go. They wrote letters of recommendation for me."

Dean stared at him. "You're really going to do this."

"I am."

"Leave us. Dad and me."

"Dean—" Sam shifted in his seat. "It's not leaving. Not like desertion or abandonment. It's called growing up."

Dean tilted his head slightly, mouth twisted. "Low blow, Sammy." He lifted his glass, drank. The eyes, the oh-so-expressive Dean eyes, were angry, and bitter, and cold.

Sam had seen them that way before. But never with him. Not like this. "No, Dean . . . hey, I didn't mean it like that. I'm not trying to run away. I'm just—"

"—growing up."

Sam picked up the envelope, looked at his name printed on the front. He'd used Bobby Singer's salvage yard as an address, because he couldn't be sure how long they'd be in any one place; and Bobby instead of Pastor Jim because Bobby, in his way, was closer to the boys than to their father. The envelope had been forwarded twice. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. I don't want to kill monsters anymore, Dean. I put my time in . . . I know what the life is. It's not what I want. And maybe you don't believe it—but there's nothing wrong with wanting something else. People do different things all the time." He twitched a shoulder. "Hell, we don't even know what Dad's father did. I just want—"

The anger was gone from Dean's eyes, but not the bitterness. The loss. "More. That's what you want. More."

"Yeah."

"Because you're the smart one, and Dad . . . well hell, Dad and I are just grunts, aren't we?"

"Dean, no—"

"Are you ashamed of us, Sammy?"

Sam's mouth dropped open in shock. "Ashamed? No, Dean! God, no—you and Dad are the two bravest men I know! You're strong, and focused, and you have this incredible ability to land on your feet no matter what's coming at you. I admire it, Dean. But—"

"But I'm not your superhero anymore. Is that it? You discovered somewhere along the way that I'm mortal." Dean's mouth twitched in a quick, humorless smile of acknowledgment, of irony. "And I'm not Santa Claus, either."

Sam returned the envelope to his inside pocket, then spread his hands upon the table. He spoke with careful clarity, avoiding passion that might lead him down a road he did not wish to follow. "I just want something different. That's all. A chance to find out who Sam Winchester really is. You figured out early on who you are, Dean . . . well, I still need to do it. I'm going to school."

A trace of mockery shaped the tone. "To 'find yourself.'"

Sam stared back. "Yes."

After a long moment, Dean shook his head. "And if I asked you to stay—"

Sam overrode him. "Don't. Just—don't."

"Crap, Sam . . ." Dean pushed away from the table, set his shoulders against the padded booth. Looked anywhere but at his brother.

"You don't need me," Sam said. "You can research as well as I can, you just don't like to. I'm not as good at hunting as you and Dad. I'm not the shot you are, I don't fight as well, and you spend 'way too much time jumping in front of me or pushing me out of the way. If I'm gone, you'll stop protecting your little brother and look after yourself."

Dean's gaze was hard. "Nice justification, Sammy. And it's bull. All of it. You're eighteen. When I was your age, Dad was jumping in front of me, and pushing me out of the way."

"I'm going," Sam said. And in his brother's eyes, finally he saw that Dean already knew it, had accepted it. Just didn't want to admit it.

Dean's hand closed around the glass, moved it in a scraped circle. Delaying a response, though eventually he gave one. "Stanford, huh?"

"Yeah."

John's oldest boy hitched one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Well, like you said . . . it's a good school."

Something kindled in Sam's chest. A trace of relief, of joy. "It's not forever," he promised. "I'll call regularly, come home on holidays—"

Dean's face twitched. "We don't exactly have a regular home, Sammy. We're blowing this pop-stand in two weeks."

Sam sighed. "You can go to Pastor Jim's, or Bobby's. I can meet you wherever. Spring break, even. I'm not walking out on you and Dad."

Dean's eyes were shielded behind lowered lids. "Yeah. You are." He shook his head, mouth twisted. Looked his brother square in the eye. "Because you know what Dad's going to say when you tell him." Then he slid out of the booth, hitched his thumb toward the door. "Come on. I'll drop you at the house. Then I'm hitting a bar, while you and Dad have your little I'm-going-to-college talk."

Alarmed, Sam levered long limbs out of the booth. "You're not going to run interference for me?" Because he always did. Always.

Dean didn't hold back. "Hell, no, College Boy. Ain't that part of growing up?"

And Sam realized that no words could possibly assuage the hurt in his brother. No matter what he said, no matter how carefully he crafted his explanation, Dean took it personally.

And Dad . . . well, Dad would be worse.