Sam set his jaw and turned the impala into the motel room parking lot. The sign blinked ominously, the fluorescent gas lighting faulty, ready to fail.

He cut the engine. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead and he wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand then searched for something to stanch the blood running into his lashes.

He'd been reckless. He'd almost gotten himself killed. But he hadn't. And there was some part of his mind that was maybe a little disappointed in that.

He was different without Dean. Harder. More focused. Nothing to soften his edges or hold him back.

He tried not to think of him. And a lot of times he succeeded. Sometimes for entire hours before a song or a smell brought the specter of Dean back to consciousness.

He hated it.

Ruby, alone, had stuck with him. She didn't let him shut her out. She hung on, answered his anger with a calm detachment. Soothed his wounds with her body, which weirdly seemed to just open up more wounds afterward.

Sam took a breath through his nose. The only thing keeping him going was anger. He ran on it. He was angry, and his anger was so recklessly diffuse it couldn't settle on a mark. Angry at Dean for dying. Angry at Ruby for being a demon.

Angry at Bobby for giving him the space he'd forced him to give by taking off. Angry at himself for, well, everything.

And Angry at Lilith...which is the one target his fury had a place to land.

Ruby opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. "Hi Sam."

Sometimes he swore he could smelled sulfer.

Her brows hitched up inquisitively. "You know if you die before we get to Lilith..."

"I'm fine." He snarled.

She sat down and closed the door. "What's with you?" She asked, her lip curling.

He didn't really have an answer. Everything was so ...wrong somehow. So terribly wrong.

And if he'd been truly thinking about it, he'd have realized that her sitting there, occupying the spot that Dean had always reserved for him...

Well that was what was the most wrong of all.