(A/N: So, on account of being horrifically blocked with a couple of other fics I'm currently working on, and in combination with last Friday's episode completely ripping my heart out (but that's another matter lol) my little plot bunny has been nipping at my heels to revise this AGAIN and put a little new life into it. Being reinspired for things always means I need to go back and get reacquainted with my fics so where as I've already revised this once I've done it / am in the process of doing it again. So, for those to whom this seems familiar, it was at one point long, long ago tilted "Shelter from the Storm" basic concept is the same, there's been some minor changes but mostly just in wording and description and some more dialogue added. I'm currently still revising, there's about three more chapters that I have to revise but I'm hoping to have a new one up by the end of the week and hopefully that will be motivation for my writer's block to go away for my other fics. I also have two new fics I'M DYING to start but I have so many on the go right now. I wish I could just be paid to write fan fiction lol but don't we all?

This is a Cas/OC fic and it may border on a little sueish but well written sues make my heart brim with love and I enjoy writing them very, very much. So, I hope you find it at the least well written and enjoyable even if it turns out a little sueish.

I'm trying to keep as much to the timeline set in season four but may deviate from time to time or readjust but nothing that's going to be unbearable. For the sake of this fic, we are picking things up sometime between Yellow Fever and It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester. I'm trying to stay away from word for word show dialogue but if a little squeaks in here and there it's because it's important or it just plain can't be helped.

Other than that Same old standard issue disclaimer applies, I do not own anything other than my OC but I would very much like to own both of the Winchesters and ohhhhhhh if I owned Cas…)

Prologue: The Road so Far

Sam Winchester took a long slow swig of coffee from a precariously lover filled cup. Eyes glued to the screen of his laptop intently, he scrolled over the contents of an online newspaper article and half jumped out of his skin as Dean flopped down gruffly against the overstuffed vinyl seating of the booth they had been populating the past twenty odd minutes

It wasn't that Sam wasn't glad to have his brother once again among the land of the living, quite the opposite in fact. It was more or less a matter of being trapped in the difficult phase of readjustment that was posing a bit of a problem. It had taken quite a good chunk of the time he had been hunting on his own to adjust to life without his brother and it went without saying it was only logical for a similar adjustment phase to happen. After all Dean did have a certain sort of presence (for lack of a better word) and said presence didn't exactly lend itself to the concept of transitioning smoothly. A lot of things had changed when Sam was on his own, and though it was going to take some time and a little bit of effort, there was nothing to say that they couldn't be changed back. At least for the most part anyways.

Sam looked up from the screen only long enough to shoot Dean a look of subdued disgust at both the smell and content of the greasy breakfast sandwich he had set about devouring. Apparently not taking the time to chew a single morsel was another one of Dean's habits, personality traits, and / or quirks that would need a bit of readjusting to. As uncomfortable or put out as he was, at the very least Sam new he wasn't the only one who needed to settle back in to life as it had been, and for some strange reason he found it more than just a little reassuring. Whatever Dean had gone through, it had understandably changed him. Not on the surface or in any blazingly evident way, but on a deeper level, a level that only those who knew Dean, who understood him and really understood him well would notice. Sam knew his brother perhaps better than anybody, and with every day that passed he became more and more aware that the brother who sat before him now was but a shell of his former self. Dean wasn't ever going to let on that everything was anything other than alright of course, not until he was pushed to his breaking point; a fact which had Sam perhaps the most concerned. For now, however, it was just one more thing that needed to be shoved to the back of his mind so that more pressing matters could be readily dealt with.

"What?" Dean mumbled around food-swelled cheeks as he noticed his brother staring him down incredulously.

"Nothing." Sam brushed a few crumbs that had jettisoned from his brother's mouth off of the table. "Just trying to figure when exactly you were planning on surfacing for air."

He rolled his eyes and flashed a sarcastic smile before taking another enormous bite out of his breakfast. "Find anything yet?"

"I think so, I mean it sounds like it could be our kind of thing."

Dean pressed Sam for more information with an exaggerated hand gesture.

"Small town Nebraska, mining town kind of deal just outside some place called Stapleton…"

"Nebraska's weird." Dean cut his brother off matter of factly and slurped his coffee sloppily whilst reminiscing of various Nebraskan hunts gone awry.

"Anyways…" Sam shot Dean an exasperated look and cleared his throat. "In keeping with weird Nebraskan phenomena, this place puts weird on the map. This place has gone ghost town virtually overnight."

"Really?"

"No calls to family, no emails," Sam spun his laptop around so as to better illustrate a point with the displayed website. "Cars are in garages, doors are locked from the inside, dinner still set out on tables, you name it. Everything is as it should be, there's not one thing out of place except for the fact that is in essence everyone apparently vanished into thin air. By all accounts, this place is buzzing with tourist activity basically all year round and just like that it's dead."

"Maybe they all got wished out into the corn field or something." Dean chortled, scanning briefly over the contents of the website and lingering on a handful of photographs quite effectively depicting a town that had come to an unnatural stand still.

"Not exactly, but I'd definitely say 'or something'" Sam half chuckled.

"Whoa…" Dean half exclaimed, reaching the point in the article Sam was in wait for him to find.

"Yeah."

"An entire town goes A.W.O.L minus one girl?" Dean arched a brow. "That's more than just a little off."

"And Dean, this girl is under some mental ward lock down or psychiatric observation in the next town over. She hasn't slept for two weeks and according to the article she hasn't been able to give police a solid statement due to extreme psychological trauma."

"Psychological trauma or something that's just so unbelievable they think she's gone over the edge."

"Exactly." Sam agreed. "There's definitely more to this than anyone's ever going to read about in the paper, that's for sure."

"See? I told you Nebraska was weird." Dean grimaced. "And I don't just mean this stuff, have you ever met any of the general population of small town Nebraska? The country bumpkin, hillbilly factor alone is enough to make you sleep with one eye open for weeks."

"Dean."

"I'm just sayin'" He held up his hands in defense and downed what was left of his coffee in one swift gulp.

"What do you think?"

"Looks like we're headed to Creepsville, Nebraska."

Dean near jumped back out of the booth, showing his trademark enthusiasm for his "profession". For that brief moment in time things seemed exactly as they once had been; and that, for the time being was good enough for Sam.