Charlie isn't sure how long Sam crouches there, just holding her and letting her cry, murmuring soft reassurances in her ear, but eventually he helps her up and, after she declines being carried, supports her as she hobbles to the car. She lays in the back with her head in his lap while Dean, who doesn't say a word, drives.

Everything hurts. Her body, from the beating it received and gave; the movies always leave out the toll that punching and blocking and kicking takes. Not as much as being on the receiving end, sure, but still, bruises. Her brain, from trying to process the double-consciousness of Dark Charlie and Good Charlie, now made whole again. Hell, she's pretty sure her soul hurts, because now she remembers the things she did in the war, torturing people, sticking that letter opener into Russell Wellington, and Dean's face as he beat her.

She can't seem to stop crying, and Sam never stops stroking her hair, and she doesn't remember when she grabbed his other hand, but she grips it tight and doesn't let go. Dark Charlie was right about one thing: Sam really is all good guy.

Sam takes charge when they get to the hospital, spinning a story about how his friend was assaulted and his brother fought off the attacker and no, none of them really got a good look at the guy, sorry, it was dark, he was wearing dark clothes, it all happened so fast and they were just worried about getting their friend to safety. Charlie does her best not to show how skittish being in proximity to Dean makes her right now: she knows that will only raise red flags for the hospital staff, and that's the last thing they need right now, the last thing she needs. It must work, because a couple of hours later she's cleaned and bandaged and set, her arm in a cheerfully pink cast and sling, and they're in the Impala on their way to the bunker.

She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she must have, because she wakes up in the bunker. Sam is in a chair next to her bed, and he puts aside the book he's reading as soon as he sees she's awake.

"Hey."

"Hey," she answers groggily, her voice scratchy. He helps her sit up, and hands her a glass of water and more pain medication. "How long was I out?" she asks after she downs the water plus a refill.

"About twelve hours. You hungry?"

"Starved."

He smiles. "I'll be right back with some soup, OK?"

She nods. He's at the door when she calls out, "Sam?"

He turns back. "Yeah?"

"I don't . . . I'm not ready . . ." she's having trouble getting the words out, saying out loud that she needs him to keep Dean away from her right now.

Fortunately, he understands. "You won't see anyone but me until you ask to, and you can kick me out any time. OK?"

She nods, and wonders what he hasn't told her that makes it so easy for him to know how much space she needs, and from whom.. He had mentioned that things got pretty hairy with the Mark for a while . . .

He returns with a bowl of hot soup, and she chooses not to ask who made it: from what she's seen, Dean is more of a cook than Sam, and the soup's heartiness has a Dean sort of feel to it, but she's not sure she's ready to deal with Dean even at the removed level of him making some frankly delicious soup for her.

Charlie briefly contemplates attempting to take a shower, but the colossal effort required just to get up and pee convinces her that, nope, that can definitely wait. She gets back in bed, already drowsy again. "Got any fiction in that stack of books?" she asks Sam.

He smiles. "Yeah, actually. Check it out: a first edition of The Hobbit, before the revisions to fix the continuity issues with Gollum and the Ring." He holds it out to her.

She doesn't reach out to take it. "Will you read to me?" she asks instead.

"Sure. Want me to start with "Riddles in the Dark"?"

"Duh."

She manages to stay awake through the version that, according to Lord of the Rings, is the lie Bilbo put in the Red Book; she has to hand it to Tolkien, it's a solid retcon for the major discrepancies. Once Bilbo escapes and rejoins the Dwarves, however, she quickly drifts off.

Sam is still there when she wakes up again. "You are still eating and sleeping, right?" she asks.

He closes his laptop. "Hey, who's looking after who, here?" he teases, but she raises her eyebrows and glares. "Yes, I'm still eating and sleeping and all the other necessaries. I'm just doing my work in here so if you need anything, well," and he spread his hands in an "at your service," sort of gesture.

Charlie smiles. "So, how long was I out this time?"

"About six hours. Just a suggestion, but if you can manage to stay awake for a while, then it'll be a more or less reasonable time to go to sleep for the night and you'll be on your way to re-establishing a normal sleeping pattern."

"Is that the wisdom of experience I hear?"

"Kind of. Too much sleep has never really been my problem, but I do have a pretty good understanding of the recovery process."

Charlie looks down at her hands. "I believe you, but I'm not sure how far that's gonna get you in this situation," she says softly. Sam's hand enters her field of vision and comes to rest on hers.

"Believe it or not, I might have a pretty good idea of what you're going through."

That makes her look up sharply. Too sharply—it sends a pang through her head, and she grimaces. He offers her water and pain meds, and after she takes them he continues, "Chuck's books ended with me taking the swan dive into the cage, right?"

Charlie sets down her water. "Wait. That . . . that's what happened. Literally?" she asks, wide-eyed.

"Well, yeah. I thought you knew that," he says, eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

"Dude, I thought Chuck was like, embellishing for dramatic effect or something! Creating a sense of finality for the reader! But you're telling me that you actually, literally jumped into the cage and took Michael and Lucifer with you?"

"And Adam," Sam says softly.

"Holy shit. Wait, how long were you down there? I mean, if it's OK for me to ask, because it occurs to me that that could be considered kind of a personal question, and—"

"Charlie!" he says, cutting her off. "It's fine, and actually directly connected to what I wanted to tell you. I wasn't down there for long at all, topside time, before Cas came and pulled me out. Except, uh, he wasn't quite as strong as he thought he was so, part of me got left behind."

"Huh?"

"My soul. Basically, there was a year and a half where my soul was in the cage, but my body, which still had all my memories and everything, was up here, walking and talking and hunting."

Charlie tries to process this. "So, so people can be alive without their souls?"

"Yeah."

"So, what's the difference? I mean, there has to be a difference, right? I was under the impression that souls were kind of important."

"They are; they're vital. When I was soulless, it was like . . . I don't know, I just couldn't feel things, really feel them, on an emotional level. I had needs and wants and drives, but everything was different. Even the way I experienced my memories was different. Some things felt sharper, because I was operating on unimpeded logic. I was a really good hunter, at least if quality is judged by monsters successfully stopped. But I didn't really care about things like civilian casualties. I mean, I knew they should be avoided if possible, but if they happened, I was fine with it. Hell, sometimes I even caused them because it was the most direct way to finish a hunt. I was ruthless. I was like . . . you know that Buffy episode, uh, "Bad Girls"? Where Faith shows Buffy her way of doing things, and explains it by saying "see, want, take"? That was basically me soulless. Faith Lehane minus the emotions."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You watch Buffy?"

Sam smiles, and there's a sadness to it she doesn't understand until he says, "Jess was really into it. And once I got past the mostly-inaccurate portrayal of the supernatural, I had to admit it was pretty great."

Wow. Also, how the hell did she not already know this? Too busy thinking Dean was the fun one just because Sam is more reserved and quiet. And there was still some truth to that assessment, depending on how she was defining "fun" in a given moment. If she wanted to go out drinking and trolling for chicks, Dean would always . . . was always the guy. But Sam knew computers and Harry Potter and, apparently, Buffy. She should have realized. Maybe if she'd spent more time with Sam, what Dean did wouldn't hurt so much. Yeah, right. But all she says is, "I should probably stop assuming I know almost everything about you just because I've read those books, huh?"

He huffs something that isn't quite a laugh. "Yeah, that would probably be best." The way he says it, Charlie's pretty sure there's yet another story there, but that's for another day.

"So, back to the soulless thing. Year and a half of, what, Robo-Sam?"

"Basically. If you allow for robots with-no, you know what, never mind." He's blushing and avoiding her eyes.

"Soulless you was a total sex god, wasn't he?" Charlie asks, grinning.

Sam looks up, incredulous. "Dude, just because it doesn't do it for me doesn't mean I can't see the appeal," she tells him archly.

"Plus I had to find something to do at night, since I didn't sleep," he says, going along with her lighthearted take on the information.

"Wow. No sleep and no inhibitions for a year and a half. You must've left a lot of happy ladies in your wake."

"Well, it depends how you define inhibitions. I started working with Dean again after about a year, and I'd say that counts as an inhibition, although, the way I was thinking then, just barely. And I did stick to the consenting adults rule. And, uh," he ducked his head and looked up at her through his lashes, "who said they were all ladies?"

Oh. Oh. "Does Dean-"

"No," he says quickly, looking at her anxiously.

"Right. Roger that."

Sam smiles, clearly relieved. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Charlie thinks Sam is probably deliberately giving her time to process. It's a lot, but she's really enjoying her growing sense of solidarity with him. She chooses not to ask about labels: she's been around long enough to know that if he has one he wants her to know about, he'll tell her when he's ready. She's beginning to realize that that's how Sam operates: he brims with kindness and compassion, but her only gives away the really personal stuff in tidbits as he decides people can be trusted with them. The last few days have really opened her eyes to how precious that trust is.

"So, we kind of got off topic once I mentioned Buffy . . ." Sam says eventually, reminding her of what they were talking about.

"Yeah, I guess we did. So, I'm guessing what you were leading up to telling me about was what it was like to try to integrate memories of being soulless with memories of what happened in the cage once you were all put back together? Wait," she says, realization striking, "Isn't there a pretty big time differential between here and hell? Like, ten years to the month or something?"

"Sounds about right, yeah."

"But, Sam doesn't that mean you were . . . " she trails off. Holy shit. "So, what you're telling me is, not only did you have two sets of memories, but one was of you doing a lot of things you never would have done if you'd been whole, while the other was of a couple centuries worth of what I'm assuming was unspeakable torment, and somehow you were still able to function after all that?"

"Well, it was touch and go with the being able to function part for a while, but yeah, basically."

"OK, we'll come back to that later. Or, I will. To process. Anyway, what I wanted to say was that you really do understand, then, don't you? What it's like to remember doing things that I never would have done, but at the same time it really was me?" She can feel herself tearing up, and wipes aggressively at her eyes.

"Yeah, I do. And what you have to remember is that first part, that, whole, you would never have done those things."

"But I signed up for it. I asked for the spell. Doesn't that mean that I'm responsible for everything that happened?"

He meets her eyes steadily as he answers. "I don't know. I really don't. I think it's more complicated than that. You're a good person, Charlie. I'm sure it's hard to see that right now, but you are."

She leaned forward and he, realizing what she was doing pulled her into a hug.

"Dark me got one thing right," she mumbled into his shoulder.

"Oh yeah? And what's that?"

She pulled back so she could look him in the eye. "You are a really, really good guy. The part about having no bite was bullshit, but the goodness? Very on point."

"Well, if you think so, then it must be so," he says with a smile.

"Damn straight," she says, nodding emphatically and then grimacing at her head's objection to the movement. Sam reaches out and rubs it lightly, and she leans into the touch, humming contentedly.

"That laptop have much juice?" she asks after he stops.

"It's plugged in," he informs her, holding up the power cord. "Why?"

"Because you've put me in the mood for Buffy," she says, scooting over and patting the bed next to her. Sam smiles and joins her.

As he finds it on Netflix, he asks, "So, did you ever take advantage of the fact that one of the Potentials looked just like you? Like, for costume purposes."

"You know it!" she tells him.

He grins and passes her the laptop so she can pick the episode.