I'm posting this now even though I can't obsessively edit the way I normally would; I've been deteriorating due to shitty circumstances, and I don't know how things are going to go. So I just want to get this posted.

I'm not focused enough to think about potential triggers, so tread lightly. I don't think there's self-injury or suicide-related triggers in this one; but again, not focused enough to be sure. Sorry.

ETA: A little note that I feel is needed here.

I am not good at writing things I haven't experienced; and I have not experienced recovery. Try as I may. Writing the exact thing you can't have, and doing so while circling the drain, might just be beyond me.

So, while I do have Sam gradually improving, you won't be seeing fast healing here. I understand if this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but that is what I'm capable of at the moment. I still hope this is enjoyable to some of you, and I'm sorry my personal crap is messing with my work.

He actually hasn't thought about Amelia in a while. And he was good with that, he was fine with that. Almost fine with that. No more checking up on her online to make sure she was still alive, not even occasionally. He told himself that being worried about her was just part of life now, and a toll he needed to pay - for being naive enough to pretend that normalcy was an option again (an option, ever); for giving up on Dean while he was in purgatory. He should never have taken that chance on her behalf, either, and now he had no right to any part of her, and that was that. Another ache to file away as best he could.

Avoiding her memory got easier over time, too.

But now she's here. Or rather, he's there, in the small house back in Kermit, Texas, and for some reason he's on the floor. It's dark and he's on the floor and there's dust in his mouth and the dog is crying, why is Riot making that sound, where's - -

Oh. They were watching TV, and Amelia went to bed and he stayed up. And he must have done something wrong, because everything hurts. His joints are stiff like he hasn't moved in forever. He's lying next to the coffee table, face down; his left arm is protectively folded over his head, the way he got used to sleeping back in the day (only way he could sleep after the shtriga). And he's been breathing hard against the carpet. Can taste dirt. He coughs, and the noise he makes is muffled and all wrong, a sound emitted from someone else's lungs, at the other end of the house. Too far away to be his.

He closes his eyes and the world falls away again.

Riot is licking his face now, frantic. The scraping against his stubble sounds like sandpaper, jars him back to awareness; his arm moves up on its own to ruffle the dog's long fur. "Okay, okay buddy, 'm okay. Shhhh, you'll wake up your mom."

He somehow manages to sit up, somehow drags himself to his feet and stumbles over to the bed. He must have decided to lie down, because he's already dropping onto the mattress, heavy and strangely helpless, and then his face is pressed against white cotton. Against Amelia's dark curls on the pillow. Can't move, again.

He breathes in once, twice, and he's gone.

Amelia always scoffs at him when he teases her about her hands being cold, but they are. They feel like soft ice against his face, now, as she thumbs his eyes open. The sunlight streaming into the room through the spaces between the heavy curtains is too bright, and it takes him too long to wonder why she's prying his eyes open to begin with.

"Sam!"

He realizes she's been calling his name ( shouting his name) for a while now. Becomes aware of a distant pain in his arm that's also been there for a while. It's Amelia's other hand, gripping his bicep, panicked fingers digging into the muscle almost hard enough to bruise.

"Sam, wake up, wake up! Don't do this, come on." Now that she's forced his eyes open, he can see that her face is frantic, her usually-pale cheeks flushed, stained bright red. Adrenaline. He's never seen her like this, so terrified. "Sam, please, you're scaring me."

Oh.

He needs to wake up.

Sam! PLEASE!

He blinks, and the memory of that night, that morning, back in Amelia's house fades away. He's in Ellen's backyard again, a different sun warming his back, just a memory this was last year it's okay it's fine. Awake, definitely awake.

Jane is watching him, sitting quietly on an old tree stump a few feet away. He's forgotten about her, that she was here with him. That they were talking. What were they talking about?

She's looking at him like she's expecting an answer. Did she ask him something?

He moves uneasily. "What - - "

Jane smiles. He wonders if she always looks sadder when she smiles, or if this is for him; he seems to have that effect on people, lately. "You sort of went away, just now," she says. "We've been sitting like this for around fifteen minutes, and you weren't... here, at all. Do you remember what caused it? What we were talking about?"

She leans her chin on her hand, looking at him intently. "See if you can remember."

He tries. Instantly there's resistance, there's pushback, his mind trying to batten down the hatches we don't need to think about that, no no no no no - -

But she's right. He knows she's right. He struggles, reaches in through murky waters. Amelia. Floor. The bed. No, focus. Today, this morning. "We came out here to take a walk since it was nice out. And you were telling me about how you decided to become a therapist."

Jane nods, says nothing.

"And - - and we were standing by the fence, and I told you that Amelia's backyard in Texas looked a lot like this. And you asked how long we were together."

"That's right. Do you remember what else I asked?"

His head hurts. He squints up at the sun. "I, um - - " recovering the memory of what happened just a few minutes ago shouldn't feel like this, like he's pulling a heavy chain out of a mine that's a mile deep. Like hard work, like a challenge.

"Oh. Right. You asked if there was anything unusual while we were together. If she ever said anything about me having these episodes. I said no."

Jane nods again. "And you told me a bit about your life with her, remember? About how good it was to feel normal, to kind of have a regular job. About how you got used to not sleeping alone again. And then you started to - - I guess 'stall' is the right word here. Like you had trouble thinking and talking at the same time. I could tell something was coming up."

He looks down at his feet, at the muddy ground. It rained yesterday, and Dean was moping around because he'd been talking about maybe having a barbecue out back, just with Ellen and Jane. Not like any of them have friends they can invite, and Bobby's too far away - -

"Sam."

He blinks. "Yeah. sorry. I - - I think something did come up while we were talking, a memory. Or a dream. I can't tell which."

Jane doesn't look at him like he's crazy, doesn't say what do you mean you can't tell, doesn't look surprised. "That makes sense. Did you remember having an episode back then? Memories from when you were dissociated can have this dream quality to them. They tend to be fuzzy."

He closes his eyes. Leans back against the side of the house. Solid, real. "That's pretty much how it felt, yeah. I remembered this night, I don't know when exactly, probably in the beginning. I was lying on the floor inside the house, and Amelia was asleep in bed. I think - - I think I must have lost some time; maybe I lay down while I was sort of groggy and just drifted off. The dog woke me up. And then it was morning and I was in our bed, and Amelia was trying to make me wake up, and I couldn't. Like I wasn't even in my body."

He swallows hard. "Guess I've always been like this, huh."

The words sound flat, unreal. He still can't quite wrap his mind around what they mean. What they mean about him.

"But I honestly don't - - I don't get how that's possible. All these years."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, take college, okay? I was a scholarship kid, for one. I would've been out on my ass in no time if shit like that kept happening. There's just no way it - - "

Jane nods as he gestures vaguely, then lets his gaze drop to the ground, tired and frustrated. None of this makes sense.

"Look, Sam,I get it. I do. We've spoken about this, about how it could have been milder back then. You know this. What is it you're really struggling with here?"

Sam has to begrudgingly admit to himself that she's probably right before he looks up at her. Dammit. "Okay, yeah, there's something else. Say these disconnects weren't as extreme, say I managed to forget about them. But not one person ever confronting me about it? No one ever thinking there was a problem, even if those kinds of… incidents... only happened every once in a while? That I don't get. Jess knew, Amelia knew. They knew something was up, even if I didn't. So how - - "

Jane sighs. "Well, even if we don't assume that you guys did discuss it and that you forgot, which is very possible, here's the thing. People frame strange experiences like that in all kinds of ways. I've heard everything from spiritual and religious explanations to blaming alcohol or sleepwalking. Jess and Amelia and other people in your life had to work with what they knew."

Sam frowns. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning - - okay, take just one example: it's sort of a common thing for people who survived something life-threatening, or witnessed something traumatic, to mention having had an out-of-body experience, right? 'I felt like I was watching it all happen to someone else, from across the room,' that sort of thing."

Sam shrugs. "Yeah, I guess so. I've heard that."

"Well, when it's a one-time thing like that, more often than not it's a common form of dissociation. It's basically a stress response - actually pretty normal. I mean, considering the circumstances. But lay people who describe it happening to them don't know that, right? They don't have a name for it, they just know their brain did something unusual and unsettling. That everything suddenly sort of went sideways, felt off."

She shrugs. "And if you don't know what something is, you just… you form your own explanation, using what you do know. And that's where we start hearing people's interpretations for what they felt."

Sam closes his eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted. It doesn't matter. Jess, Amelia, people from college, friends. They're all gone. Everyone drops out of your life, one way or another.

Jane's voice softens, and he wonders if she can tell again where his mind went. Her intuition makes him uneasy, sometimes; he doesn't like anyone having that sort of access to his mind after Lucifer, after Meg.

"My guess is that's what people around you always did, too. They rationalized. If you suddenly get groggy and unresponsive, or you blank out on things you should know, but then you're fine - and you stay fine - maybe it becomes 'that time you were so tired you fell asleep with your eyes open.' Maybe it becomes just a weird anecdote over time: 'remember how you forgot where you were driving? That was odd.' You were doing better then, those episodes were far apart. My guess is they were rare enough that Jess and Amelia never had the chance to realize it was more than that."

Sam thinks back to Jessica's words. You're safe. "Amelia, maybe. But Jess could tell, she knew. She knew to tell me where I was, what day it was, that I was safe and at home with her. She could tell I was losing grip."

We're home baby, we're in bed. This will go away okay - -

He looks up at the greying sky. "I think it's going to rain again soon."

Jane gets up, waits for him to join her. "Yeah. I don't know about Jess, Sam. Maybe she did know more than she let on. Maybe someone else in her life needed her that way before you guys ever met, and she developed a hunch. Hard to say."

Her mom, Sam thinks dully, and the shiver that runs up his spine has nothing to do with the way the wind has picked up. He only met Jess's mother once, but he remembers the way Jess watched her from across the small table as they sat in the restaurant that evening. Like she was making sure nothing bad was happening.

Is that how she was watching me, too?

Going back into the house and finding something stupid and distracting and utterly useless on the TV suddenly seems more important than ever.

Inside, Dean is bent over the table, reading something that he drapes his arm over as soon as he sees them come in. Sam doesn't care. No spell or magic can fix this, nothing in Dad's journal that can give them a lead. He doesn't want a lead, doesn't want to pull any other threads loose, enough that's enough.

His brother seems to sense his mood, because he doesn't ask anything. Dean's been asking him way too many question lately, and they all mean the exact same thing. How are you doing Sammy, you still here?

But he doesn't ask now, he just gestures towards the kitchen. "Made some mashed potatoes. You should probably have some, they're awesome." The I'll make you eat something if I die trying is implied.

That's right, Sam realizes, he hasn't eaten today; he tried with breakfast, stared at the scrambled eggs and bacon on his plate for an eternity before he carefully put his fork down and went back to the sofa, determined not to vomit.

"Yeah, sure. Did you eat?"

Dean looks up at him, and damn, he seems so tired. "Yeah, but I could use some coffee." As he gets up Sam thinks to himself, he wants to keep me company. Or he wants to make sure I actually eat. Probably both.

He nods. "Okay. Yeah, you look like it."

"Shut up."

In the kitchen Sam excavates a few spoonfuls out of the lumpy, yellow mound that's sitting in a large plastic bowl by the sink, piles them up on a plate (along with some peas and carrots that he assumes Dean also cooked, but forgot about because other veggies are pretty much invisible to him), and sits down by the window. He wishes he could still read as easily as he used to, could still concentrate the way he always took for granted, before. It could help him eat, maybe. Help him not think while he eats.

Instead, he watches Dean pour himself some coffee and drink it way too slowly. His brother pretends not to watch him back, which he appreciates. But the silence grows heavy after a while, and it's a relief when Dean finally speaks.

"So," he says over the rim of his mug, "I was thinking - - next week is Ellen's birthday."

Sam finds himself suddenly clutching his spoon at the sound of the last two syllables. The word means something else now, after the Cage. Lucifer took care of that; he was especially creative on May 2 of every year. Made sure Sam knew the date, too. He's survived more birthdays down there than he's ever had topside.

Food still in your mouth. Chew, swallow, don't think, just mashed potatoes not entrails not ashes nod acid keep it down now that's it - -

"How'd you find out? She didn't tell you, did she?" His voice sounds neutral, he doesn't know how.

Dean huffs like the mere notion is ridiculous. Which honestly, with Ellen, it is. "What do you think? No, she left her real driver's license out one time and I saw her D.O.B. Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could do something, I don't know. It's probably a shitty day for her, since - - since Jo."

Sam nods. "Yeah, has to be."

"I'm guessing she'll kick our asses if we make a fuss about it, right? So maybe we just clean the house extra that day, we get something she likes from that restaurant in town, put it in the fridge for her to find. Nothing big, you know? Just stuff that seems random. Plausible deniability."

Sam thinks back to one of their many motel rooms. To making breakfast in the dark, before Dean and their father fully woke up; to standing in the kitchenette, nervous and excited over a stack of powdery, half-burned pancakes and one of those tiny, disposable things of maple syrup that he saved from some random diner months before that, because he had a plan. Get up Dad get up get up.

To the way the words happy birthday stayed trapped in his throat as John did get up, as he shuffled to the kitchen and stopped to stare at him. The way they both tried to smile.

When did Dean take the place of that desperate six year old he used to be? Oh, you know when. Come on.

He blinks at the stab of guilt, wills it to go away. Nods weakly at his brother's words.

"You think a cake would be too much? She'd hate that, right?" Dean puts the mug down in the sink, rubs his forehead. "Shit, I don't know. I don't want to make her sad. What do you think? Sam. Sammy. You with me?"

Amelia laughing as she wiped frosting off his lip in the park, you really have never seen a birthday cake before, have you. Riot sneezing happily, nose buried in the grass, lounging in the sun next to them. Content and healthy and safe, like he was never trembling and bleeding in Sam's arms in the middle of a dark road. See, some things you break you can fix -

He's used to his lights dimming without warning, to suddenly losing grip on the basic facts of his existence; and Dean has told him that he's actually lost consciousness altogether a few times since the cabin, too. The world going dark is hardly a surprise anymore.

But this is not that. This is… different. His mind isn't foggy like it usually is when he disconnects, and he's not gone like they tell him he is when his body shuts everything down all at once.

Instead he's here, excruciatingly present, but he's stuck. He can't move. Can't open his eyes all the way, just like that time at Amelia's. Like the mere memory of that morning in her house has shaken something loose, cracked open a door he wasn't looking at but has been standing near the whole time. What's happening -

The side of his head hurts, there's aching pressure on his face; his shoulder, too. And he dimly realizes that he's slumped against the wall, still in his chair in the kitchen, next to the window where he sat down. That's why there's so much light bombarding his eyes even though they're half-closed, just daylight, nothing else. Dean is gripping his shoulders again, calling his name again Sammy hey hey look at me come back okay, but he can't tell him he's awake. Can't do a single thing.

Even more alarming, he doesn't quite care that he can't. He's just… here, useless and floating inside his body. Feels his arm being pulled up, slung over Dean's shoulder. He realizes he's meant to stand up, but there's no way; if he could just explain that there's no way, that his legs are someone else's and won't respond to him.

As Dean gives up and lets him stay seated, he feels himself tilting and can't do a thing about that, either. His head lolls forward and it's a rock that he can't even consider lifting, and Dean takes his chin and brings his face up more careful than he thought he ever was, woah there okay alright. Dean is looking into his eyes like he's searching for him, and somehow that brings back the memory of other hands on his face, back in that cabin, and now he's falling falling falling.

Feels like he's been here before, like this has happened before, and he thinks that if he could just concentrate he'd know for sure, he'd be able to fully open his eyes.

"Sammy, you're okay. We don't have to talk about that, it's just - - I didn't know it would - - alright, just breathe. That's good, you're good. You got this."

Dean's words should be reassuring, but he's holding him like he's afraid to let go. He's calling for someone over his shoulder, maybe Ellen, maybe Jane. Hard to hear over the heartbeat echoing in his head. This will never end, this is his life now, always falling away. Always losing grip - -

Darkness doesn't come, won't come this time. The world remains brutally close, and as a figure he can't quite focus on enters the room he forgets that this is a good thing, forgets that he wants to stay anchored. Forgets why he would ever want that.

Jane has found a seat in front of Sam and is holding his hand, speaking to him quietly now about getting grounded. Dean leans the back of his head against the wall where he stands, watching his brother's face.

He should really be able to catch it sooner, by now. Took him just a couple beats too long to realize that something about the topic of birthdays was triggering - and there's a word he never expected to use in earnest, another term that means something real and visceral to them these days and fuck that, he hates that. It was so much easier when it wasn't even in their vocabulary, when it was a vague way to say offensive, the way most people seem to use it. He hates that he knows what it actually means now, hates that he needs to know.

A few feet from him Sam is breathing hard in his chair, though his face is slack, his eyelids fluttering. Jane says, "this is progress, Dean. He's a little more present right now than he was during his episodes when I first got here. You can probably tell, right?"

As she turns back to Sam, not waiting for a response, Dean wants to tell her no, wants to say what the hell are you talking about, how the fuck is this better. But she's not wrong. There's a spark in his brother's barely-open eyes that was distressingly absent, before; for all his non-responsiveness, Sam looks like he's still here. Just trapped.

Funny how easy it is to read, once you get enough practice. He hates that he has enough practice.

And then he thinks about where, exactly, Sam is trapped, and that's no good, definitely not something he can explore right now. Too many paths that lead to too many of his own temporary jail cells, still lodged in his memory, locked without him and bound to be reopened. All the times he was pinned down and waiting to die in battle. All the places Alastair carved out just for him (out of him) back in hell, to remind him that there was nothing other than pain anymore. No need to drive that point home, not for him, but you don't get to reason with a bear trap.

The electric blue glow of his first djinn's tattooed finger as it touched his forehead and put him under. The edge of the knife hitting his ribs as he stabbed himself - his might-have-been life, his shot at relief - right in the heart and pulled himself out of that dream, back to familiar misery and to a Sammy that really knew him.

The hard ground and the low hanging, crooked sky, the ever-present stench of rot in Purgatory. Its monsters closing in, every minute of every day and night.

"Get me some ice, or a cold pack if you have one, will you?" Jane says, and he gets up and walks over to get it out of the freezer and says nothing, just stares as she looks down at his hand.

"You're holding that real tight, doesn't that hurt?"

He hasn't considered it.

"Yeah."

His eyes are on Sam's face again, but Sam isn't looking back. That doesn't hurt, either. A welcome respite. He'll take numbness anytime, nothing wrong with a little numbness. Not these days.

Jane seems to disagree. "Dean, hey," she says, "eyes on me. Look at me." She sounds worried, and that's enough to make him drag his eyes back to her because why is she worried she said Sam was doing better what's wrong now.

"You look a little spaced out," she says, studying his face too closely for comfort. Stop it. "I need you to focus, okay? You can't help Sam if you're - - you know."

Oh. She's worried about him. Why is she worried about him? He's fine.

"I'm - - fine," he says, and it's only when the words leave his mouth that it dawns on him that he's not. Only when hears them stumble out like that. Huh.

Jane shakes her head. "You're nowhere near fine," she says, "and we'll need to talk about that, later. But I need to know if you're up to this, right now."

The anger that bubbles up to the surface manages to crack the thin sheet of ice that's somehow formed over everything in the last few minutes. He's never not up to taking care of Sam. "I'm FINE, Jane," he says, and he means it this time, and she nods. "Okay. Good. Hand me that."

He gives her the cold pack, holds on to the fast-fading resentment because it helps. Being angry helps keep at bay what that numbness means; like his ever-growing suspicion that it's not just Sammy's brain that shuts off under pressure, sometimes.

If nothing else, it's easier to stay angry than to wonder what he'll tell Jane later. He doesn't want to tell her anything, anymore; he certainly doesn't want to tell her that somehow, Sam's utter helplessness during these episodes makes him think about every civilian he didn't get to in time. About bodies lying twisted and still inside homes that will never be the same, slumped over in cars that shouldn't have become crime scenes, torn to pieces in muddy forests waiting to be discovered by hikers. He's not even sure why he's making that connection - Sam isn't a civilian and never got to be one, ever, even though he tried. But there that is.

He watches as Jane presses the cold pack into his brother's hand and closes his fingers around it. She tells Sam - again - to look around him, which he doesn't, not right away. But he's in there, his desperate energy filling the room even as he stays motionless, his head lolling sideways and his other hand open and lax in his lap.

Dean watches as something in Sam's face changes, minutely and painfully slow; as he finally begins to squeeze the ice pack on his own, as he blinks and shifts his gaze and starts responding to Jane's directions.

He does his best to smile when Sam's eyes land on his face, unseeing at first and then, as his brother takes in what he's looking at, filling with recognition and with that damn apologetic sort of surprise. Don't be sorry, be okay, be here.

"You with us yet, Sammy?" he asks, and something cold and tight in his chest loosens, thaws just a bit when Sam nods, clears his throat and slurs, "y- yeah, sorry, 'm okay. You okay?"

Much later in the day, when he finally feels like he can leave Sam alone long enough to go out, he takes the Impala and heads into town. He goes through the usual - groceries, stocking up on beer, an aimless walk just to breathe, just to pass some time somewhere that's not the house - before he finds himself standing still in the dimly lit street, staring at a storefront window. He was thinking about getting Ellen's birthday cake from this bakery next week, but now all he can imagine is Sam's face when they open the box, Sam's eyes going dull every time he goes to get something from the fridge and sees it there waiting.

No birthday cake for Ellen, then.

And he's not pissed off about that, no way he could justify being pissed off with Sam over that, and there's no one else he can turn this anger towards; not really. Not in any way that would feel like there's someone (something) palpable on the receiving end. Waving his fist at the sky and demanding justice for his little brother would get him nothing, that much he's learned; no one is listening. The silent, dark skies that night back at Bobby's, when Sam was locked inside detoxing and he was standing in the yard, not above begging, made that clear. And they no longer have their own personal seraph to demand explanations from. Cas wasn't ever that forthcoming with answers, anyway, though he did his best. Dean knows that much, at least, and the knowledge of how adamantly the angel tried right until the end is another wound that won't get to heal.

"You'd have something to say about all this," he tells the empty space by his reflection in the window, "I'm not sure what, though." He knows better than to expect a flap of wings to follow the words, knows better than to look for something materializing out of thin air behind him, but he still watches the glass for a while before he turns around to go.

Things are what they are and that's all there is to it. He needs to believe that. But it's hard to make peace with all of this, it's not in him to make peace with all of this. With the path their lives have taken. His own grief he can deal with, but Sammy in pain is not something he's supposed to accept. He wasn't made for that sort of acquiescence. He can't; doesn't know how.

Sometimes it's like he's still standing with a crying baby in his arms, barefoot on the damp grass in Kansas, looking up at the orange glow of fire bursting out of that bedroom window; listening to the high pitch of shattering glass, the creaking moan of burning wood. All these years and all these lifetimes later, sometimes they're still those kids waiting for Mom to appear in the doorway, somehow safe and sound because she had to be. Watching Dad stumble out alone.

He thinks about how the first time Sam ever said "mom" was when he asked why they didn't have one. About how he knew to wait for John to be out of the room to ask. I probably got mad at him for bringing her up, too.

There's no point in thinking about that; none. Because either way, it's not like when they were kids, when he could lie, when he could promise Sammy everything would be okay. Sam isn't that kid anymore. He's a grown man who watched the love of his life burning to ashes, pinned to the ceiling with her limbs broken, eviscerated. Dean remembers the look in her eyes through the flames, her face still untouched somehow, like the thing wearing Brady wanted to make sure that Sam wouldn't miss an ounce of her terror. Jess looked the way people do when they can't quite comprehend what's happening to them, but know they're doomed. He and Sam have seen that look too many times, on too many faces; he's pretty sure that was the worst one.

He can't promise Sam safety from an enemy that's beyond his reach, a knife that turns without warning in the wound that Sam, himself, is only beginning to understand.

He hates feeling this helpless. Hates knowing that he can't make Sam heal faster, that this will take time, maybe years. That's not how he rolls. Not how Sam rolls, either.

Things are what they are. He keeps telling himself that, all the way back to Ellen's, and as he walks up the front steps he's still not convinced.

Sam looks up at him from where he stands by the kitchen sink, arms ridiculously soapy and shirt halfway soaked. Of course he's doing the dishes. His brother seems to think that he needs to make up for every one of his episodes by being as helpful around the house as humanly possible. They've given up on telling him he doesn't need to make up for what he can't control; Jane told them Sam needed to do this to feel like he can control something, and so they let it go.

Doesn't mean he can't shake his head at the sight. "Hey, Sammy."

Sam smiles sheepishly. "Hey," he says, and looks down at the mess he's made because apparently, even he is aware that doing dishes shouldn't be the equivalent of sprinting through a car wash. "Um, I'm just cleaning a little."

"I see that," Dean says, more diplomatically than he ever thought possible. "You up for a movie? I got us some microwave popcorn, some - - where's Jane?"

"Upstairs," Ellen says from the living room, and her voice sounds off. One look at how she's arranged herself in the TV chair tells him why; she's leaning sideways slightly, like she can't quite find a tolerable position. Bad pain day. "I Don't think she's coming down again tonight. She said something about giving us all some space."

Good, Dean thinks, and he doesn't wait for the guilt to set in before he turns back to Sam. "So? Movie?"

Sam nods, drying his hands. "Yeah, sure. Something stupid, okay? Something funny."

That's code for no blood, no guts, which is beyond sad, because watching action movies used to be their favorite pastime on nights off. But this is fine; they could use some laughs. They definitely could.

"Yeah. You got it."

He wonders, sometimes, about the molars that Lucifer strings together to make his mock rosaries. He wonders if they used to be his; twelve molars in the average human mouth. How many times has the archangel pulled him apart and recreated him from a bloody pile of bones? He figures it's somewhere in the thousands, by now. And Lucifer's always been a collector. Sam supposes he could have plucked teeth out of his broken jaw enough times to have all the grotesque prayer beads he ever required.

They make such strange echoes, too, especially in the dark. You never think much about the sound that teeth make against each other, not when they're secure in your mouth. Grinding together in Lucifer's fist, they don't chatter; they sort of scream.

He shivers and takes in a ragged breath, opens his eyes to face the next round. But he's in the living room, leaning hard against his brother's arm on the sofa oh I fell asleep I was just asleep this is real it's okay.

He pulls back, and Dean lifts his arm to carefully roll his shoulder, tries to do it casually - that's definitely his no big deal face. It's his bad shoulder, too, Sam is almost sure. It's been hard to remember, hard to think about how Dean injured it in the first place. He vaguely remembers that it happened in the cabin, but he's not sure why, and he's given up on getting Dean to tell him.

"Sorry," he says, "guess I fell asleep. Didn't mean to, um - - "

Dean makes a show of studying his sleeve like he's double-checking for elusive cooties. "Nah, you didn't drool on me, we're good."

A snort of laughter from the TV chair makes Sam flinch before he remembers. Ellen. She's rolling her eyes at them in what he's pretty sure is her version of Bobby's idgits, and between that and Dean's moronic sense of humor, this is probably the best thing he could have woken up to.

Thank you.

He leans back, sneaks a look at the clock. He's missed out on about half the movie, but it's not like he can track, anyway. He's been staring at the TV purely for comfort for a while now; to catch glimpses of something familiar, to maybe follow a narrative for a few minutes before it dissolves. To do something other than sit there and look at the wall and mourn the things he can't do. To not miss Dad's journal, the books of lore, mornings of skimming the newspaper over coffee for cases.

He sat down to watch this... well, whatever random comedy this is - with Dean and Ellen just to be in their company, really; and he's basking in it now, so relieved to emerge back into normalcy after expecting - - never mind what he was expecting. Here. You're here for now. Good.

And it's not their old normal; he would never have let himself doze off like that before, nor would Dean have let him get away with sleeping on his shoulder – "not your friggin' pillow, man" – but this is now, and it's as close to normal as they'll probably get. He lets his head fall back, watches the ceiling for a while as he listens to his brother laugh and chew on leftover popcorn. His muscles are relaxing, his breathing evening out.

This feels like home.

He tries hard not to fall asleep, tries hard to stay where it's safe. He wants so badly to stay.

He's staring at the long, blond hairs that are floating around the living room like disentangled cobwebs, almost transparent in the blue light coming off the TV screen. He's been staring at them for a while, and it occurs to him that they shouldn't be there. They're filling the air, so many of them now. Tentacles of a thing that's perched on the windowsill, waiting to strike. What is it?

Oh. He's asleep again.

But the relief that comes with the knowledge that this isn't real fades away, doesn't hold. He's trapped, and pain is coming, it's always coming for him.

He sighs and turns towards the dark shape that's now leaning against the window, half-hidden by the curtains. Waiting.

No escape. Of course there's no escape.

Out in the real world Dean isn't slumped silent and pale against the armrest of the sofa, he's awake and alive and safe. Ellen, too. Sam reassures himself of that as he struggles to stand up.

He's only alone in here, only for now. This will go away.

He wonders why he finds that so hard to believe.