So. GISHWHES kind of took over my life there for a while. Sorry about the wait.

By the time Bobby returned to the hospital at around eight that night, Dean had the whole thing worked out in his head; his master plan to find and kill the man from the road. The man who Dean had trusted enough to let his injured brother get into the car with, and who in turn had hand delivered them to Jack. Randy, Jack had called him. Dean knew his name, he knew what he looked like, and he knew his car.

In Dean's head, he would drive to Donovan and be able to easily locate Randy. It was a small town, after all. If he couldn't do it by simply driving down the roads until he found Randy's car, he should be able to ask just about anyone and get an easy answer. In towns like that, everybody knows everybody. Once he figured out where Randy lived, he wouldn't hesitate. There was no use dragging it out. He would simply walk up to the door, walk inside, and then leave before neighbors had a chance to wonder what that loud noise was that sounded an awfully lot like a gunshot. He would be asleep at the hotel within two hours.

Bobby appeared from the elevator looking tired, even though he had been the one sleeping at the hotel for the past six hours. Still, Dean felt bad that Bobby had to stick around at all. If it weren't for his stupid cold, Dean would insist that Bobby go home; and if it weren't for Randy, Dean would tell Bobby to go back to the hotel and Dean would call when there was news. He could handle the waiting, that was his job. He just had to take care of this one little thing first.

"Well you look rested." Dean commented.

Bobby grunted and fell into the seat beside Dean. "Don't worry about me." He said. "You're the one who needs extra sleep if you want to see Sam anytime soon. Gotta get rid of that cold."

Dean ignored Bobby's words with a frown and stood to leave.

"Get some sleep, Dean." Bobby said again, his voice gruff and authoritative. Dean could hear the underlying message. Don't do anything stupid. Just go back to the hotel and sleep.

Dean brushed off Bobby's concern with feigned nonchalance. "Yeah, yeah. Might stop at the bar for a few." Both he and Bobby knew that it was a lie.

Bobby let Dean go without another word, and within minutes Dean was on the highway, headlights pointing toward Donovan.

The streets of Donovan were dark, many of the streetlights were left burned out with nobody interested enough to replace them. Dean made his way slowly up and down the roads lined with run down houses, but didn't see Randy's car. He stopped at a gas station, the only one around, and prayed that the whole town wasn't in on Jack's plan to kill him and Sam. If they were, this might be a little bit more difficult than Dean had originally planned.

As it turned out, the teenage girl behind the counter at the one-pump gas station had no idea who he was. And when Dean flashed her a smile and asked sweetly if she knew anyone by the name of Randy who drove a silver Pontiac, throwing in her name and a wink into the mix for good measure, the girl was more than happy to oblige. She knew Randy, and she didn't think twice about giving his home address to a complete stranger.

Dean drove up the driveway not worrying about the loud growl of the Impala's engine. This wasn't a surprise attack, and Randy had nowhere to run where Dean couldn't see him and follow. There was silence as Dean turned the key and killed the engine. The lights in the house were on, but nobody was peeking out the window to see who was coming. Dean checked that his gun had bullets and tucked it back into the waistband of his pants. He walked up the driveway, confident but cautious. There was always a chance that Randy would see him coming and would pull out a gun of his own. Dean would be ready.

He approached the door and paused, feeling an odd urge to knock. That was pointless though, so he reached for the door knob instead. A second before his hand would have touched the cool metal, the door swung open. Dean's hand moved for his gun, but stopped short when he saw the small pigtailed girl in front of him. He blinked down at her and the girl returned his blank stare. Suddenly Dean wasn't so sure.

"Uh." He said. "Is Randy home?"

The girl didn't move, or even show any sign that she had heard Dean. Dean cleared his throat to ask again, but was interrupted when a familiar face stepped into view behind the girl. Randy's face dropped when he saw Dean, and Dean could see the color rush out of it. He wasn't sure if he should reach for his gun or... he looked back to the girl. Obviously he couldn't shoot Randy here.

"Lilly, honey, go back inside and stay by your brother." Randy said to the girl.

The girl turned on her heels and was gone in a flash, blonde pigtails bouncing behind her as she ran. Randy swallowed hard. The kid was gone, why hadn't Dean shot him? This should be over by now. Somehow though, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"You mind if we take this outside?" Randy asked, voice shaky.

Dean nodded and let Randy walk past him out into the yard. Dean followed until they were by a barn a good distance away from the house. Randy stopped there and slowly turned to face Dean. Dean could see clearly the fear in his eyes. Though at the moment he wasn't sure if he was really going to shoot Randy, Dean pulled out his gun and aimed it at the man's head.

"Oh god." Randy moaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

A second passed, then another. Randy stayed motionless, eyes glued shut, hands clenched into fists, just waiting to die. This was not how this was supposed to go down. Dean lowered the gun, but didn't take his finger off the trigger, just in case.

"I take it you remember me then." He said.

Randy nodded without opening his eyes. Dean could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest and for a second he worried that the guy might have a heart attack or something. Then he realized that this was a stupid thing to worry about since he was there to kill Randy anyway and a heart attack would leave less of a mess. Still, somehow Dean had pictured the whole thing differently. No kids, for one. Randy should be putting up a fight, for another.

"Well?" Dean asked impatiently. Randy needed to say something.

Finally Randy opened his eyes but didn't relax at all, even after he saw that the gun was no longer aimed directly at his head. Just the sight of it in Dean's hand was enough to keep his breathing at an alarming pace.

"Well..." Randy repeated hesitantly, and Dean could almost see the wheels turning in his head, trying to put together exactly the right words so that Dean would put the gun away and leave.

"You brought my brother and me to Jack." Dean said bluntly. "You know he was trying to kill us, right?"

Randy nodded and swallowed hard. "Jack used to... well, one time I saw him, and he..." Randy's sentences trailed off at the ends as if he were afraid to finish his thoughts. "There was this thing in the field there." He said finally, nodding toward the cornfield behind his house. "It, uh, it was some sort of... of monster." He stopped and waited for a reaction, clearly expecting Dean to show some sign of disbelief. When Dean gave him nothing, he continued with a choked sob. "It killed my wife. Jack... he killed it. He knew what he was doing, too. It wasn't his first time with... something like this. I could tell. He used silver bullets." Randy shook his head as if he almost didn't believe it himself.

He continued. "He told me that he... hunted... things like that. Monsters and, uh, ghosts and stuff, you know? I would've thought he was crazy except for the thing that killed my wife... Look, all I know is that Jack called me up that night and told me that he had a couple of monsters that had escaped. He told me to drive to his place and see if I could find them on the road. When I saw you were just humans... well, at least you looked like just humans. Jack's the expert though, you know? I didn't know what to do, so I just..." He trailed off.

He didn't need to finish the sentence. Dean knew exactly what Randy had done next. It was why he was here. But Randy's story complicated things. The man hadn't known what he was doing. It was no excuse, surely, but... maybe it was. He was coming to the aid of an old friend who had saved him and his children after a monster had killed his wife. Randy had no way of knowing the kinds of things Jack, as a hunter, would have dealt with. Some monsters do look human. And Dean couldn't really shoot him now. Not with the kids. Dean huffed, frustrated, and let the hand with the gun fall to his side.

"I'm sorry." Randy's voice was soft, barely a whisper, but Dean heard it, and he felt himself deflate.

"Look," Dean said. "You have no business going out looking for monsters – even if we were monsters – which we're not." He sighed and glanced back at the house where two small faces were peeking out through a window by the front door. He tucked the gun back into his pants and saw Randy relax visibly. "Just promise me you won't do anything like that again. To anybody. You're not a hunter. You just worry about your family and let other people deal with their own problems."

Randy nodded fervently. "Yeah." He said quickly. "Yeah, of course."

Dean didn't feel any better, but he didn't think that killing Randy would change that.

"If you don't stay out of trouble, I'll be back." Dean warned, patting the gun just to get the point across.

Randy nodded again, eyes widening. "No more trouble." He agreed.

Dean left Randy with his children – unharmed, but hopefully with a little bit of sense knocked into him. He drove back to Wateska feeling tired and frustrated. A dull headache pounded behind his eyes and made it difficult to concentrate on the road. All he could think about was the bed waiting for him back at the hotel.

He was asleep withing minutes of his head hitting the pillow.

His phone rang at 3:32 in the morning. At least that's what the dim red lights from the alarm clock by his bed told him as he reached for the screeching device, deafeningly loud in the still silence of early morning – way too early morning. He saw Bobby's name flash across the display and flipped it open at once.

"Bobby." He said gruffly. "What's up?"

"Sorry to wake you up, Dean. I figured you'd kill me though if I didn't let you know that I'm going in to see Sam. Doc gave me the go ahead."

Dean rubbed at his eyes and sat up in bed. "He's okay?"

"He's fine, Dean. You shouldn't come here. You need to get enough sleep if you want to speed up that cold, and there's nothing you could do here anyway." He waited a beat for an answer from Dean. When none came, he restated his answer to Dean's question. "He's okay. Really, he's good. You know I'll call if anything changes."

Dean knew. He also knew that the thought of pulling on clothes and heading out into the night made him cringe. He was just so tired. Besides, Bobby was right. If Dean went back to the hospital, all he would be good for would be holding down the chairs in the waiting room.

"Tell him to take care of himself." Dean said into the phone. Already his eyelids were almost too heavy to hold open. "Watch out for him, Bobby. I'll be there in the morning."

"I'll tell him." Bobby promised.

They hung up, and Dean was almost instantly back asleep.

It was only two days before Doctor Adams gave Dean the all clear and he was allowed to see Sam. His cold hadn't really amounted to anything except a sore throat and a tendency to tire easily. He slept a lot, as per Bobby's orders, and when he wasn't sleeping he was at the hospital, sitting in the waiting room doing nothing except drinking coffee and flipping through magazines. Besides that, Sam's immune system was quickly returning to normal and after the two days, Adams decided that he and Dean were both healthy enough to finally see each other. It would only be a couple more days of close monitoring, and then Sam would be free to go.

Dean peeked around the corner of the door to Sam's room and found Sam asleep. For a moment, Dean couldn't shake the feeling that the past few days had just been a dream and Sam wasn't actually any better than he had been when they arrived at the hospital. But then Dean heard the TV, just a low hum in the background, and saw the half-eaten carton of yogurt on the breakfast tray by Sam's bed, and he knew that Sam was just napping. He was getting better.

As he neared the bed, Dean noticed bandages peeking through Sam's hospital gown and patches of yellowing bruises on his face and arms. Considering what Sam had been through, he looked good.

Dean stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. He wanted desperately to talk to Sam, to wake him up and make sure that he was okay, but he knew that he should let his brother sleep. As he silently considered his options, Sam's eyes fluttered and he mumbled something soft and incoherent, and Dean's mind was made up for him. He sat quietly in the chair next to Sam's bed and watched his brother intently. When Sam's eyes fluttered a second time, Dean couldn't resist any longer.

"Sammy." He said softly, then louder when Sam didn't respond. "Sam."

Sam's eyes opened slowly and took a moment to find Dean, but when they did, Sam's face broke into a wide smile.

"Dean." Sam said happily.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean replied, unable to stop his own smile in return. Hearing Sam's voice again after so many days was like a heavy weight suddenly lifted from Dean's chest. He felt like he could finally breath again. "How are you feeling?"

Sam sat up slowly, placing a hand across his chest and wincing slightly as he did so. Dean considered reaching out and helping Sam up, but then Sam was rolling his shoulders and neck as if testing his body for damage.

He shrugged. "Bored. What about you? Bobby said you were sick."

Dean shook his head as he reached for the unopened orange juice on Sam's breakfast tray. He peeled back the foil cover and took a drink.

"Nah. Didn't amount to anything." He set the juice back on the tray and turned to face Sam directly. He lowered his eyebrows and asked again. "I'm serious, Sam. How are you?"

Sam dropped his eyes to his lap and picked at a loose thread on his gown. "I'm okay." He said.

Dean didn't buy it, and he let Sam know this with a warning tone. "Sam..."

Sam huffed and met Dean's eyes again. "Really, Dean, I'm okay. I feel good, it's just..."

"Just what?" Dean prodded after a moment of silence.

"Nightmares." Sam said almost inaudibly.

Dean felt cold. The one thing he could never protect his little brother from was the inside of his own head. Nightmares were not anything new for Sam. After Jessica's death, it had been practically a nightly occurrence; and since then, there had been plenty of things to keep Sam's mind busy during the night. The fact that these nightmares were enough to rattle Sam was saying something, and Dean didn't like it.

He looked to his hands as he thought about this and then turned back to Sam. Sam was waiting, eyebrows pinched together in a pleading expression. He knew Dean didn't have the power to chase away his nightmares, but he still expected something. No matter how old they got, how much bigger Sam was now than when he was a kid, no matter how many monsters Sam fought or how capable he was of taking care of himself, he still needed Dean to be there for him, to look after him. And likewise, no matter how much Dean teased his brother for being a dork or a girl, Dean needed Sam right back. It was a connection between them that had been there since that night in Lawrence when Sam was only six months old and both their lives had changed forever. Dean would never say it out loud, and Sam would never bring it up, but it was there all the same.

Now, Dean searched for the words to make things okay again. He sighed, knowing that if those words existed, he wouldn't be able to find them.

"Sam." He said, gently but with enough force that Sam would know he meant what he said. "You're safe now, okay? They're all dead. All of them. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you anymore."

Sam nodded jerkily and sucked on his lower lip. A small, sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You can't protect me from everything."

Dean huffed out a breath. "I can try."

Sam was released from the hospital two days later. On Bobby's order, the boys drove back to South Dakota and spent three whole weeks laying low at Bobby's house. Sam started out doing a lot of reading and a little strength training, which gradually worked it's way into a lot of strength training and, still, a lot of reading. Dean helped Bobby with old junkers and helped Sam get back into shape for hunting.

They didn't talk about what had happened, but Dean could sometimes see it in the way Sam would go for a run and focus on the pavement like it was the only thing in the world, or how he would take on target practice with a new kind of determination. If you wanted to make it as a hunter, you had to allow your fears to make you stronger. There was no use lingering in the past. It would come up eventually, Dean was sure of it. Not in so many words, maybe, but in subtle gestures and an understanding that ran so deep, it was almost supernatural.

In the mean time, they would hunt and drive and put their shared hatred for evil to good use. Because Sam was right, Dean couldn't protect Sam from everything. No matter how badly he wanted to, part of their job was taking risks and putting themselves in danger for the greater good. If Dean wanted to continue hunting with his brother, he had to accept that sometimes bad things would happen. Somewhere down the road, Sam was going to get hurt again. Dean too. And, hopefully much much further down the road, Dean was sure the job would get them both in the end. Until that day came, they would have each others backs like always, and when one of them got in trouble, the other would be there to pull him out and patch him up.

So maybe Dean couldn't protect Sam from everything, but he could sure as hell try. He was the big brother after all, and that was his job.

END.

I hope you liked this story! Thanks for reading!