Author Note: Look! Look! I kept my word and wrote another story supa-fast! :P This one really doesn't do much except make a passing comment at the urban legend in question, but I'm still fairly happy with the story that eventually came of that initial tiny thought.

Summary: Set between 14X13 "Lebanon" and 14X14 "Ouroboros." What Dean really needs right now is to kill something that needs killing, save some people, and feel like he still matters as more than a temporary lockbox for the worst thing he'll eventually unleash on the world.

Atlas

Wisconsin: Stay Just a Little Bit Longer

Dean wakes with a start, jolts upright in his bed from a short doze that's left a twinge in his neck, for no other reason than the fact he'd fallen asleep. An open book – some thick volume on mental control Sam found in the library – slips from his chest and hits the floor with a thud. It's just as well; besides being barely written in English, the aggravatingly small text is more theory than practical technique or application. Handed over with the best of intentions, but ultimately useless. Just one more show of relentless positivity on his brother's part.

He drags a hand down his face, cursing the cool sweat at his temples, the tremble in his fingers. Signs he can but probably shouldn't ignore, that the effort of keeping Michael locked down is taking more than just a mental toll. Dean's always been a fast healer, but the bruises left by Good Soldier Cas are taking their sweet time in fading, same as the soreness in his ribs, the tight discomfort in his throat.

A glance at his watch confirms he's clocked an hour, tops, which is par for the course since his angelic roommate moved into the upstairs unit. It's been, hell, weeks since Dean got any real sleep. His body is desperate for rest, clearly, but he can't afford it. Can't risk more than these snatches of brief, accidental sleep, tipped over at uncomfortable angles when he can't keep his eyes open for one more minute. He'll be damned if he allows the son of bitch that kind of unguarded opening.

Dean clenches his jaw and drops his head against the headboard, purses his lips and knocks it back once. Not hard enough to hurt, just to answer the relentless pounding there, the sound of a frustrated fist impacting the barrier he's created in his mind, over and over. Testing for vulnerabilities. Wearing him down.

He might not be sleeping much but when he does, he still dreams. Muzzy, disjointed glimpses of a smirking Michael stalking him with his own stolen body, through endless fields or the dim, vacant corridors of the bunker. Every time Dean slips into unintended slumber, the angel draws nearer, always closing the gap. He dreams of dark and nightmarish scenes, even in these afternoon naps; violent sensory overloads that leave him feeling drained and even more exhausted when he wakes.

There's a sense of profound inescapability to his dreams, one that feels all-too grounded in reality. He told Sam that he believes in him, in them, and God, he wants that to be true. But Dean can feel Michael's strength, his resolve, and knows he's no match for what the archangel is throwing at him. He's only human, and it feels like they're just prolonging the inevitable here. He was always meant to be a casualty of this war; Michael versus Lucifer. Lucifer's dead and Sam's safe, and now he's just treading water, too far from the shore to be tossed a life preserver.

Dean perks to sounds beyond his closed bedroom door: an approaching flurry of activity, rushed footsteps and excited chatter. Every inch of his life has been invaded with new, unwanted roommates. He'd never send the hunters away, these eager faces he still can't readily put names to despite the fact it's been months. Their presence in the bunker isn't the issue, but the fact he's now straining to hear his father's voice in the din.

His blood made them legacies, but the Men of Letters bunker was the one place in their lives that hadn't been touched by Dad. It was something they'd blown the dust off of and made their own. Dean isn't bitter about what happened, wouldn't ever take back whatever fleeting desire crossed his heart when he was supposed to be wishing the angel out of his head, but he's not sure what the endgame of that little emotional and mental detour was.

Sammy's been walking around like a hundred-pound weight has been lifted from his chest, but Dean can't help childishly thinking he'll see Dad around every corner. Like it couldn't have been that easy, or over so quickly. Mom took a considerable hit to the heart and understandably begged off for a few days to pick up the pieces, but there'd been a light in her eyes when she'd said goodbye. He doesn't resent his brother for the peace of mind, or his mother for the second chance. He just wonders why, when Dad's appearance stemmed from his own subconscious longing, he feels like he missed out on something. He isn't doing any worse for the time with Dad; he just isn't sure he feels better. And he's doing a shit job of acting otherwise.

Before Dad appeared in the library, Sam had been all about helping Dean take his mind off the fact Michael was banging around in his head. But now his brother is handling him with kid gloves, like he thinks Dean's going to come completely unhinged if he does anything more strenuous than reading a damn book. Discounting the pawn shop where they found the Baozhu, they haven't even worked a case since that thing in Fort Dodge with the killer prophet, and he's still convinced Sam sought that one out over the story that he'd stumbled upon it accidentally.

Dean gets that it might not be the safest play, but he needs to get out of the bunker for a few days, get some sunshine in his eyes and fresh air into his lungs. There's no hope of clearing his head, not really, but he badly needs to shed the layer of John Winchester that's once more dropped over every part of his being. In the days since Dad went back to 2003, he's caught himself standing straighter, biting his tongue instead of dropping some smartass comment into a conversation; his actions commanded once more by the man though he's no longer here. There's too much outside influence in his head, and what Dean really needs right now is to kill something that needs killing, save some people, and feel like he still matters as more than a temporary lockbox for the worst thing he'll eventually unleash on the world.

He rolls his head on his shoulders, releasing a crack of built-up tension in his neck. Every potential case Sam has drummed up in the past week, he's sent out a group of displaced Apocalypse World hunters, keeping his timebomb big brother on lockdown. If Dean has a chance in hell of getting out of the bunker on a job, he's going to have to find one himself.

Sam hasn't seen much of his big brother since Cas – the real Cas – got back and Dean waved off the angel's healing touch in favor of allowing the bruises coloring his cheek and throat to heal in their own time. He's not sure it's the healthiest decision, but knows his brother wants the lingering ache of these minor injuries to ground him, to keep him tethered the reality of this world without Dad and give him something to focus on besides the archangel in his head.

Over the years, Sam's grown used to watching his brother venture out when he's taken a decent mental or emotional thrashing, but ever since Michael, Dean stays close, where there are experienced hunters and an abundance of weaponry within arm's reach. Sam's certainly content with the fact his brother hasn't tried to take off on him, he's just surprised. Though he hasn't exactly been chomping at the bit to leave the relative safety and security of the bunker, himself.

It's been a couple of days, and they haven't talked about it, not really. About Dad, who manages to complicate things even when he's not being complicated. Mom claimed to need some time to herself, to get her head back on straight after what had happened, and they couldn't deny her that, or fault her for it. Their parents only had a few hours together, but it had been filled with what could have been. That sort of teasing carried a special sort of sting, one that Sam's been feeling, too.

No matter the hurt of losing the man again, Sam wouldn't wish it all away, or that it hadn't happened. Having his father grip his shoulder and offer a heartfelt apology for the way things had ended up, before he even had a chance to play his part, had helped alleviate so much of the guilt he's been carrying with him for more than a decade. He can't decide if Dean's latest hermit routine means he had a similar moment of closure with Dad or that he didn't get the chance. Or maybe Sam's just thinking into it too much, because it's not like his brother didn't have enough on his plate already without throwing Dad into the mix.

In the immediate aftermath, the emotional whiplash he'd suffered after having a second chance with Dad, Sam managed to forget why it happened in the first place. What they'd been trying to accomplish. As far as he can tell, Michael has quieted down, or maybe it's just that having Dad around, even for a few hours, strengthened Dean. Even so, they're hovering at the edge of a dangerous precipice, and there's no telling what's going to tip Dean over, send him spiraling once more into the dark void of no hope and no chance and last resort. Sam feels the presence of the Ma'lak box - the coffin his brother built for himself - in the bunker, like a ghost following him through the halls. The very knowledge of its existence turns his stomach, because the fact that it's here means the option isn't entirely off the table. They're still on a timeline, he and Cas, to figure out another way before they lose Dean for good.

He checks in with the groups that are out on various cases – a couple of hauntings and what could be a Chupacabra but might also be a raccoon with rabies – and finally ventures down the hall toward Dean's room, stopping just outside the open door.

The book he'd found for Dean is discarded on the floor, but Sam doesn't take it to heart, because it had been a long shot at best. His brother is seated at his desk, intently studying something on the screen of his tablet. Not porn, Sam notes thankfully, or the door wouldn't have been left open. At least, he hopes so.

Dean looks, in short, like hell. Sam knows his brother isn't sleeping much, and it's starting to show, in the dark smudges under his eyes, the tight lines of tension around his mouth. There's a ring of bruising around his left eye, looking days fresher than Sam's own nearly healed contusions from their pizza shop brawl. This prolonged mental torment of his brother's is of his own making, and Sam knows that. If Dean had his way, he'd be long gone, resting at the bottom of the ocean right now with Michael trapped in a prison he can't escape. Because that's what Dean feels he is, when all is said and done: a prison Michael can - and will - escape. There's a mug of coffee on the desktop and a bottle of whiskey within arm's reach, and as awful as it makes him, Sam sort of wants to wait it out, see which his brother reaches for first.

He doesn't get the opportunity to find out; as he stands silently in the doorway, Dean sighs.

"You know how creepy you're being right now, right?"

"Sorry." Sam steps into the room. He flushes, caught, and scuffs a palm over the back of his head. "Just wanted to see how you're doing."

Dean snorts. He doesn't look up from the tablet.

"Yeah." Sam drops his hand to slap against his leg. "Stupid question." They've just lost Dad, again, Mom is a wreck, Jack is still more a question mark than anything, and there's an archangel riding shotgun in Dean's head, spending every moment trying to beat a literal hole through his strength and willpower. Not that fucking great is the obvious answer.

He frowns, not liking the intensity with which Dean is staring at the screen. "What are you doing?"

Dean's eyes finally tick up, and he leans back in his chair. "Think I might've found us a gig. Walworth County, Wisconsin. Multiple reports of mutilated cattle over the past month, then a coupla dogs, and now three people have gone missing in the last week."

"Walworth?" Sam narrows his gaze, takes the tablet when his brother offers it. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Because these reports are being linked to similar sightings from the thirties in the same area." Dean lifts his chin, gives Sam a knowing look. "At least, by some of those on the outskirts of the internet."

Sam nods, smiling in spite of himself. He might have a thing for serial killer stats, but he's also got a soft spot for TV shows digging into the lore surrounding popular urban legends. "The Beast of Bray Road."

Dean snaps his fingers. "Yahtzee." He finally makes a grab at the bottle on his desk but doesn't pour from it, fingers picking absently at a corner of the label.

"You're…you want to look into an urban legend?"

"No, I want to look into a handful of cattle mutilations and missing persons that are being attributed to an urban legend by some internet crackpots."

It seems like a thin lead, especially without a single confirmed human death. Sam sighs. "Dean – "

"Animal mutilations," his brother interrupts, leaning back in his chair and ticking items off on his fingers. "People going missing in a wooded area that's had creature sightings for almost a hundred years. A creature that's supposed to walk on two legs, have grayish skin, claws, and yellow eyes. What's that sound like to you?"

Sam swipes through the report Dean's brought up, and there's no denying the marks left on the cattle corpses look eerily similar to gouges and tears he'd stitched up in a crappy motel room more than ten years ago. He taps his thumb against the screen, hands the tablet back to his brother. "Sounds like a wendigo," he responds, a bit reluctantly.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too."

He nods, chews his lip. "Okay. I'll put some people on it."

Dean frowns, and his fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle. "Why? We can handle it."

"We've sort of got our hands full already, Dean," he says pointedly.

"What, with Michael?" Dean taps his temple with his free hand. "Head's full. Hands are empty. I'm going crazy just sittin' around here, man."

"All right," Sam relents. He knows he's giving in too easily, but he's also spent his whole life with a big brother who's never denied him anything he asked for, and for better or worse, he's going to have to repay that sometime. A wendigo wouldn't be his first pick for an "easy hunt," but it's still in the realm of "easy enough."

"Yeah?" Dean perks up, drops his hand away from the bottle to settle on the desktop. Clearly, he was expecting a much harder sell.

He smiles tightly. "Yeah. We haven't worked a case in a while. And you're right, it'd be good to get out of the bunker for a few days."

"Damn straight, I'm right." His brother stands, and Sam would have to be blind to miss the way he pales from the sudden change in elevation. Dean squints down at his watch, lips moving as he runs the calculations in his head.

Sam checks the time for himself, trying to find the finish line before his brother does. If they leave within the hour, they can drive through the night and hit Elkhart tomorrow morning. Usually the more dangerous and violent parts of the job occur at night, but there's just no use going after a wendigo in the dark.

"What do you think, head out in an hour?"

"Sounds about right," Sam confirms, though there's an odd ache in his chest telling him this is a bad idea.

Dean nods. "Let Cas know what we're up to, okay?"

"Will do." He hesitates on the threshold, but decides against taking this away from his brother. Whatever Dean needs to feel stronger, more in control of the situation, Sam can make it happen.

When he finds Castiel, the angel frowns and echoes his own unspoken sentiments. "This is a bad idea."

"I'm not arguing with you." Sam sighs, drops his hands to his hips and glances down the hall to where Dean is packing up supplies. "I think he's just gotta get out of here for a couple days, you know? After…"

Cas lifts his chin, but there's a hint of leftover guilt in his eyes. "Of course. Your father."

He chews his lip, shifts his weight. "Yeah."

"In any case, you shouldn't go alone."

With Dean, he means. With…Michael. The ongoing but so-far unseen struggle playing out in his head. Dean won't be able to do this forever, but Sam gets that he also can't just sit here in the bunker with nothing to do but focus on Michael whaling on the door.

A muscle in his jaw jumps, and he tries to sound as confident as possible when he tells the angel, "we'll be okay."

Sam takes over behind the wheel on the other side of Des Moines, when his brother's chin has dropped to his chest more times than he's comfortable with. Dean grumbles about it when they stop to switch spots, as he always does when relegated to the passenger side of the bench, but within minutes his head has tipped against the door, and he's twitching in fitful slumber that seems anything but restful.

It's not the first time.

They don't share a room as much as they used to; since setting up shop in the bunker - not to mention taking in a horde of displaced hunters from an alternate world who are eager to get in on the action - what was once a life on the road has evolved into more sporadic outings for monsters and spooks. Day-long trips, and shorter drives mean they take turns at the wheel, less frequently stopping off for the night or the week in motels. Sometimes it takes longer than it should to see the cracks in the armor, the vulnerabilities that slip during sleep. The night before he found the case in Fort Dodge, Sam had walked in on his brother startling awake from one hell of a dream, the kind that left gouges in the drywall and his fingertips bloodied. The kind he should have assumed but didn't know Dean was having.

He should have commented then, should have forced his brother to talk about how terrified he was and what was making him so certain that he wasn't strong enough to outlast the angel. Sam's not sure he's doing his brother any favors, allowing Dean to go on believing this Michael situation is a one-man job. But at the same time, he doesn't yet have any other substantive plan to offer the man; nothing beyond one teary, drunken plea for more time and a bottomless well of moral support. In the end, it is a one-man job. Everything rests on Dean withstanding Michael's mental attacks until Sam and Cas come up with a more permanent option that doesn't end with his brother used, hollowed-out, and very much dead.

Dean's nap doesn't even last until the state line. He jerks upright with a snort, blinking around at the interior of the car like he can't immediately place where he is. Under the intermittent glow of passing streetlights, his jaw is visibly clenched, and Sam can hear the short, controlled breaths from the other side of the bench.

He shoots his brother a sideways glance, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. "You good?"

"Super." Dean swallows, shifts his shoulders against the seatback as he narrows his gaze at the highway stretching beyond the windshield. "How much farther?"

"Couple of hours." The you can sleep a little longer goes unspoken, but still passes between them.

"I'm good," his brother says without further prompting, reaching up a hand to knead at his neck.

Sam wouldn't mind using the last couple of hours for a nap of his own, but he's not lacking in the sleep department as seriously as Dean, so he pushes on the rest of the way.

They land in Walworth County as the sun is beginning to crest the horizon, painting the overcast sky in matte gray. As easy as it would be to match the wounds left behind with those in the past that have been ingrained in both of their memories, there's not much point in pretexting with the local LEOs; no bodies have yet turned up, and they've already spent the drive out taking turns perusing the available crime scene photos. All signs seem to point to wendigo. They've taken out a few of the creatures since that first one in Colorado, even came out of a hunt in Michigan last year without a single scratch on either of them. A milk run, Dean would have called this, back when they were young and naïve enough to think anything in this life came easy.

They stick to the outskirts of town, go directly to the last known location of the most recent missing person, a sixteen-year-old boy who'd been out with friends and never made it home that night. Runaway, Sam would have thought, in agreement with local PD, if not for those photos. The foggy stretch of two-lane is empty and silent and cold, the cover of trees preventing the rising sun from offering much in the way of natural light. Sam zips his coat to his chin, bounces on the balls of his feet and holds the flashlight while his brother unrolls a paper map over the trunk of the Impala.

With Dean, it's always been about what he's not saying, and Sam's gotten damn good at reading his brother's body language over the years. He knows immediately when Dean has decided on a plan, by the way he shifts his too-tense shoulders and taps the map with the pad of his thumb.

His warm breath clouds in the winter morning air when he asks, "what are you thinking?"

Dean straightens, points to a clearing on the map about a mile from the car, on the other side of this dense, unnaturally quiet foliage that stretches along the western edge of the creek. "We set a trap here. Draw the damn thing out into the open."

It's really the only way to win against one these brutal, blur-fast creatures. Trick it, trap it, make it play by your rules, on your turf, during daytime hours. Problem is, you really only get one crack at it. One shot, and if you miss…

"Fine," Sam relents, shoulders dropping. The sun is peeking through the branches over his brother's head, and he pockets the flashlight, folds his arms over his chest. "But if we do this, I'm the lure."

Dean frowns. "I'm faster than you."

He hasn't come right out and said it, but he doesn't have to. Sam knows what Dean is doing, knows he wants to get his hands dirty, wants to work out some frustration and fight something solid, get his fingers wrapped around the papery neck of this thing. They're all play-acting at normal, but things aren't normal. "You're not faster than a wendigo, Dean."

His brother rolls his eyes but doesn't otherwise respond as he gathers up the map and yanks open the trunk.

Sam crosses his arms, stomps a foot. "Dean," he persists, jaw clenched. He can't see his brother's face as Dean digs into the cache in the trunk amid clangs and bangs, tossing items into a duffel bag.

"Can't get your way all the time, Sam."

He sucks in a breath, feeling like he's been sucker-punched. Like having his brother here instead of sunk to the bottom of the Pacific was nothing more than the result of a selfish temper tantrum. That's a low blow, such an obvious one that it doesn't even need to be acknowledged out loud.

Dean stills, shoots Sam a look over his shoulder that stands as a silent apology while also emphasizing the fact that he's the brother getting his way on this one.

It isn't nearly enough square footage to be called an actual 'wood,' but all the same, the area feels well-removed from the town just a few miles out. It's eerily quiet, even for an early winter morning. Likely, the local wildlife has been picked clean or long since scattered. As they make their way toward the clearing Dean had pointed out, Sam idly wonders what the wendigo is using for shelter, settles on some sort of crude structure made from rocks and branches. This close to civilization and still attacking the local animals, it's likely young. At least, relative to the ancient creature who'd strung his brother up in an abandoned mine like a slab of beef.

He shakes off the thought, the memory, and trudges after Dean between trunks and brush. Dean stops without a word and holds up a hand, signaling that this is where Sam will set up. He complies with a curt nod and drops to a knee, unzippers the duffel and retrieves the flare gun. A larger fire would be ideal, but just isn't possible this close to a populated area.

Dean meets his eyes, just long enough for that this is a really bad fucking idea feeling to settle heavy and acidic in Sam's gut, then he turns and stomps into the trees, no longer bothering with stealth, shouting "hey!" as he crashes through the brush.

Sam focuses on the spot where his brother has just disappeared, shoulders tense and flare gun gripped in his hands.

"Hey!"

The answering strained, clearly inhuman call confirms what they'd already known, and a chill drops down Sam's spine. He bites down on his lip, fighting to remain perfectly still. He's not supposed to be the one the wendigo notices but, damn, these things freak him right the hell out.

He keeps his eyes on the back of his brother's head as Dean steps into the clearing, fingers visibly twitching toward the gun tucked at his back.

The thing must be not only young, but stupid, not to have sniffed out a trap this obvious. Sam will take it; he's perfectly fine with satisfying this need to hunt of his brother's and then getting them out of town in one piece as soon as possible.

There's a rustle of leaves to the left, like a harsh, sudden gust of wind. Despite himself, Sam flinches in that direction, curses himself. He returns his attention to the clearing, to Dean, and spots the creature as it lumbers forward from between the trees, teeth gnashing, claws clicking at its sides.

Dean squares up to the wendigo, smirks. The expression is confident, and lethal. Sam's a formidable hunter in his own right, and he's the one with a finger on a trigger, but he's never stopped being awed by his big brother. He realizes now just how big a blink it was, for Dean to have thrown in the towel so immediately with Michael.

He forces himself to focus and straightens, his finger tightening around the grip of the flare gun. He can't make the shot from here, doesn't yet have a clear line of sight. He exhales, releasing a cloud of warm breath into the cold air. Come on, Dean. He just needs the thing to move a few more feet.

Like his brother can hear his thoughts, Dean takes a step back, and the wendigo matches it. Sam gets the shot lined up but before he can take it, the smirk fades from his brother's expression. The change is so sudden and dramatic, it draws Sam's attention from the creature.

Dean blinks, then again, and then the color drains from his face and he wavers like he doesn't know which way is up, arms windmilling as he fights to maintain his balance.

Shit. Sam's known it hasn't been easy for his brother, keeping Michael locked down. Dean folded that hand pretty damn early in the game, and Sam's the one that shoved the cards back into his fingers and told him he had to keep playing. He knew, but this is the first time he's witnessed the struggle Dean's been dealing with in private, and it's happening at the worst possible moment.

The wendigo's young, but it's still vicious and bloodthirsty and it knows when it has its prey at a disadvantage. Sam knows he's too far, knows he doesn't have a chance in hell of reaching Dean before the wendigo does.

"Dean!" he shouts in warning, shoving branches aside as he bursts from his designated hiding place.

A stray branch catches Sam in the face, ripping needle-sharp into the flesh above his right eyebrow, and he reels his head back with a hiss. He hears a shriek from the wendigo, a startled cry from his brother. When he gets his bearings, blinking blood from his eye, Dean is thirty feet away and going down hard and fast, in a red-hazed blur of gray skin and tangled limbs.

Heart pounding, Sam squeezes the trigger. The flare blazes past the creature's skull, dangerously close to his downed brother. The wendigo rears back with a scream and disappears into the trees, leaving behind nothing but a rustle of disturbed foliage and an unmoving Dean.

He thunders across the clearing and drops to his knees at his brother's side, heart in his throat and blood pounding in his ears. Dean's sprawled awkwardly in the dirt, frightening still, face white. The left sleeve of his jacket is torn, ripped from elbow to wrist and stained with blood. Like the damn thing tried to take his arm clean off, like it might have succeeded if Sam hadn't shot when he did. There's more blood in his hair, glistening dark over his right ear.

Shit.

Sam quickly comforts himself with the feel of his brother's strong pulse. With a hand twisted in the lapel of Dean's jacket, he sits back on his heels to take stock, to weigh their options. His options. He doesn't want to move Dean until he wakes up, but the wendigo is still out there, and now it's pissed.

A rustle of leaves behind him has Sam whipping violently in that direction, breathing heavy. Something has shifted in these otherwise silent woods. They're no longer the hunters, no longer prepared. They have no element of surprise, no advantage.

Dean grunts and jerks beneath Sam's hand, then comes up from the ground with a throaty growl, swinging.

"Whoa, Dean!" He ducks, grabs his brother's arm to keep from being clobbered over the head. "Hey!"

"Sam? I thought…" Dean frowns and blinks heavily, looking around the clearing. He doesn't try to pull away from Sam's grip, and his eyes aren't focusing right.

"What is it?"

His brother squints into the trees, shakes his head. "Nothing." He wrenches his arm from Sam's grasp, drops his bloody head into his hand with a groan. "Ow."

"Yeah, that damn thing clocked you pretty good." Sam shifts his weight as Dean moves to push up from the ground. "Whoa, take it easy." His brother has always had a hard head, but these are special circumstances.

Dean sinks back to the ground, hisses as he inspects his bloody arm.

Sam narrows his eyes, can't let this instance pass without comment. "What the hell was that?"

"Wendigo," his brother responds, not looking up as he swipes a bloody palm along the thigh of his jeans.

"No, Dean, what…" Sam bites his lip, frustration heating his cheeks. Or maybe it's shame. "Was it Michael?"

Dean raises his pinched gaze, meets Sam's eyes. "You really want me to answer that?"

He doesn't. He really, really doesn't. Whatever Dean's going through right now, there's a way to look at it as entirely Sam's fault. What the hell did he expect was going to happen when he forced his brother to remain a human prison for the archangel? He should have put another group on this job, like he wanted. Things are too delicate, with Michael, and he never should have indulged the man by driving all the way out here. They're ten hours from the bunker, and Dean's prison of a head is now sporting a literal crack.

"Come on." He hooks a hand under his brother's arm and goes to work hauling Dean to his feet. "We're getting out of here."

"What?" Dean pulls away as soon as he's standing, but wavers dangerously. He blanches and swallows a few times, then fixes Sam with that intense, damned determined stare. "What are you talking about, Sam? We've got a job to do."

"I don't care about the wendigo, Dean," Sam snaps, mind already churning. There's a group based in St. Paul, if he's remembering right. Jody could have them here by the end of the day, take this thing out before it gets the chance to hurt anyone else. He'll make the call as soon as they're back on the road.

"Sam – "

"I don't care," he repeats, tone lethal.

"Cas!" Sam calls, marching an unsteady Dean into the library. His brother's trying to put on a good show, but he's clearly hurting, and spending the entire day cramped in the car didn't do him any favors. He shoves Dean down into a chair with every intention of being gentle about it.

"Hey!" Dean still barks at him as his ass hits the seat, hugging his wrapped left arm with his right hand.

"Cas," Sam says again, ignoring his brother's complaints as he spots the angel entering the room. He'd called ahead, let Castiel know they'd be in need of a quick fix when they got back.

They try to save his grace for the big stuff instead of the usual scrapes and bruises. Under normal circumstances, even a moderate clawing wouldn't rate high on the angelic healing scale, but these aren't normal circumstances. Dean's already pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion; if he catches so much as a cold, it could be the thing that tips the scales in Michael's favor.

"I tried to tell Princess Panic here it's not that bad," Dean grumbles, but he doesn't pull away when Cas reaches toward him.

Sam has been on the receiving end of angelic triage enough to know the effects are pretty immediate, to the point they've probably begun to take Castiel's healing powers for granted. A couple of unnaturally cool fingertips pressed to the forehead; good as new. Downtime between rough jobs used to lag on for days. Weeks even, if one of them managed to get shot, or worse.

Point is, he knows something is wrong within seconds.

Dean does too. He squirms, narrows his pain-glazed gaze up at Cas. "What's up?"

Castiel tilts his head, lips pursed in concentration. Or in frustration. "I'm not sure. Something's…" He presses harder against the side of Dean's head, eliciting an offended hiss.

The wound buried in Dean's hair finally glows and quickly seals, leaving a patch of dried blood. Cas draws his hand away with a frown and gives Sam a meaningful look.

He swallows, shifts his weight uneasily. "Cas, you good?"

"I'm fine."

"Dean?"

His brother makes a fist with his left hand and grins up at him, but the smile doesn't reach his tired eyes. "Good as new."

First, bone-weary and about as stressed as he's ever been, Sam thinks, it doesn't mean anything.

Then that annoying voice in his head, the one that's usually right, answers, of course it means something, jackass.

There's a goddamn angel in his head.

Sam's eyes pop open and immediately go to work scanning the dark corners of his room for what's woken him, but sometimes a bad feeling is all it takes.

He drags himself upright, pushes a hand through his unruly hair and checks the time. It's morning, but early. He's managed as close to a full night's sleep as he ever gets, but a very specific and familiar nagging in his gut tells him that he's been lying down on the job too long. He frees his legs from the covers, pulls on a pair of jeans and brushes his teeth, then sets out to get eyes on his brother.

Dean's not in his room, and the bed doesn't appear to have been slept in. He's not in the library, or the kitchen, though there's a pot of coffee on and his favorite mug isn't in the collection on the counter. Sam's heart flutters as the safer options of retreat are eliminated. Because what he's left with is escape.

Sam finally finds his brother on the threshold of the archive room near the garage. Dean is leaning against the jamb with his arms folded over his chest and staring intently into the room, at that damn metal tomb. He can tell for sure now that his brother hasn't slept. And he needs it. Head wound and gashed arm angelically repaired, Dean still looks beaten down and wounded, tense and exhausted. Sam's just happy the man doesn't have a glass of whiskey in his hand, encouraging dark, dangerous thoughts.

"Hey," he says, too loudly, because he has a sinking feeling that Dean doesn't need the encouragement for thinking such things. He never really has.

Dean shifts his gaze, acknowledging Sam's presence before he turns back. "Hey."

His voice is gravelly and low, and Sam doesn't like the way his brother is looking at that box, like they're destined for one another.

"Everything okay?" he asks tentatively, keeping a distance.

"Fine," Dean responds, in that tone that again means stupid fucking question, Sam.

But it's not blame in Dean's voice. Despite what he said before at the car, he would never blame Sam for something going wrong now. Maybe he should – hell, if things go sideways and Michael ever finds a way out of his head, Dean should blame Sam for it, but he won't. He'll shoulder that himself, like he always does, because in the end it was his call to make. Not Sam's. Sam just played dirty. Got drunk enough, and pathetic enough, to blow a hole through his brother's resolve.

It took only one thrown fist, when the archangel has likely tossed hundreds at Dean by now. Maybe thousands.

The sense of clarity hits Sam like another blow to the gut. When he thought Dean was desperate and at the end of his rope, his brother was actually holding it together better than he is now. He had hoped this plan with the Ma'lak box had been Dean's last-second Hail Mary heave for the endzone, but it turns out that had been the play he'd designed with as clear a head as he's had since Michael took up residence there. And that just makes everything that much worse.

They don't have to wait for a passing cold to be the thing that tips the scales in Michael's favor; it's already happening. Dean could have died out there, on an easy-enough hunt, from merely the threat of the angel in his head.

All of a sudden, it feels like they don't have nearly as much time to figure this out as Sam had hoped.