Title: On Scorched Wings

Summary: Sam's visions are back and it's worse then either of them could have imagined. Coda to 15x01. Hurt/Comfort. Hurt!Sam. Protective!Dean.

Warnings: Spoilers for everything up to and including episode 15x01 "Back and to the Future". Rated K+ for bad language, graphic descriptions of injuries and violence, GSW, loss of body control, convulsing, strangulation, references to God and religious themes.

Disclaimer: I don't own the show or the characters. Just borrowing them for a little while.

'oo-oOo-oo'

Later, Sam wouldn't remember how it all went down or how it even started.

The last thing he felt before his world was tipped into darkness, was the throbbing of his heartbeat in his ears and the sweat drenching his skin. Fear, that was his last memory. Undeniable, paralyzing, gut-wrenching fear. And then pain, sharp enough to burn bright behind his eyelids, the sensation of an ice-cold hand closing slowly around his lungs, turning his breaths ragged and harsh as black spots started dancing in the corner of his eyes. His legs had been frozen into place when the first images flashed before him, his own face, but unrecognizable, torn into a sneer of hatred and deception. A pristinely white suite. An icy fire burning in his eyes. A gruesome smile twisting his lips. And then Dean's voice, clear as day, cutting through the static. 'Sammy, please… Please.'

Then Dean struck the ground, the life in his green eyes slowly fading until they went sightless and dull. Empty.

And Sam felt his blood-curdling scream rather than hearing it, a cocoon of despair and hopelessness engulfing him as he crawled and dragged himself toward the edge of his awareness, sobbing and pleading, spitting and hissing and cursing at the monster wearing his body. He clawed at the walls of his own mind, but it was too late. Dean was dead. Killed by his own hands.

And then suddenly it was over and Sam couldn't remember where he was or why he was on the ground or how exactly he'd managed to kick off such a hectic commotion of voices and movement around himself. He didn't remember that five minutes ago, his eyes had rolled back into his skull in that seedy motel room Dean had checked them into or how his muscles had convulsed, white, foamy froth bubbling from his lips and eyes protruding from their sockets. He didn't remember if Dean found him before or after he went down, but he remembered in perfect clarity, the first moment Dean's voice managed to pierce the veil clouding his mind, desperate and shaky.

"Sam? Sammy!" Dean yelled at him and Sam – only semi-conscious and shaking all over – felt the cold bathroom tiles against his back, could sense the fluorescent light flickering through the dirt-flecked bulbs. He leaned into Dean's touch, greedy for his warmth, starved for his presence, his voice, just aware enough to feel and think, but not yet conscious enough to form words. "Damn it, Sam, open your eyes and look at me!"

There was an instinct inside of Sam, a gut-reaction that caused his eyes to flutter because Dean had that pleading quality to this voice that meant he was seriously scared and Sam would have done absolutely anything to take that fear away.

"Sammy, please," Dean begged, under his breath. "Say something."

That finally did Sam in. The words were too similar to the 'Dean' in Sam's vision and suddenly he saw Lucifer again, in his true form, burning hot against his chilled skin, whispering cold promises against his ear. He saw Dean hitting the ground and his own face smiling down at his brother's corpse.

'Sammy, please…' the tremulous voice rang in his ear, over and over again like a broken record. 'Please.'

Sam's eyes suddenly snapped open and he was gasping, scrambling against the cold, moldy tiles as Dean's face loomed in front of him. A flood of memories hit him full-force, from Sam's first word to his first steps, to his first day at school and it was all Dean, all of it, every single goddamn fraction of it.

"Dean," he whispered. It was like a prayer and absolution at the same time. The only thing that mattered, the only thing that ever really mattered, was that Dean was right there by his side, his hands steadying against Sam's clammy skin – a vicious fire burning bright in the face of Lucifer's ice cold abyss of darkness. "Easy, Sammy," Dean whispered, touching Sam's forehead and his neck and carding a hand through his hair. "You're alright. You're okay, just take it easy."

"Dean." Sam's voice was hoarse from the screaming he'd done, animalistic cries of fury and grief breaking ragged and tormented from his throat as he yelled at Lucifer to get out, to get out and far away from them both. 'Leave him alone! No, please— LEAVE HIM ALONE!'. He wasn't sure if he'd said all these things out loud, if he'd fought Dean's hands instead of Lucifer's, if he'd yelled at Dean in the midst of his desperate litany instead of at the archangel wearing his body.

"Can you stand?" Dean asked, and then didn't even wait for an answer before he gently propped Sam's body up against himself and then pulled him to his feet, keeping a steadying grip on his shoulders the whole time. Sam just blinked and hovered there, unable to do much else as his brain tried to process what just happened. There was a pounding in his head, like a sledgehammer breaking through granite, a white, flaring ball of light pulsing behind his eyes and Sam was dizzy with it, almost numb.

"Alright, c'mon. Let's get you outta here." Dean guided him outside and onto the bed that was farthest from the door. Sam flopped down and buried his face in his hands while Dean dimming the lights and shutting the TV off as though that would help, as though Sam was merely having a migraine, when a minute ago, Lucifer had snapped Dean's neck while wearing Sam's body. "Here, drink this. Small sips."

Sam looked up to see Dean with a bottle of water in his hands.

He took it, but didn't make a move to lift it to his lips.

"Dude, what the hell," Dean muttered, sitting down on the bed opposite of him. "You said you were gonna take a shower and next thing I know you're on the floor, thrashing around like you're having a seizure or something. Scared the hell out of me."

Sam set the bottle aside and washed a hand over his face, hoping to rub the lasting horrors of what he'd seen in his visions from his features.

"Hey." Dean gently bumped his knee against Sam's to get his attention. "Talk to me, man. What the hell was that?"

Sam swallowed hard, trying to come up with the right words. He knew there was no sense in lying about this. Dean would see right through his bullshit. And besides, this was too big of an issue to hide it, too big of a revelation to even just try and keep it from his brother. Not when it might actually come true.

Sam closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose to keep the memories of Dean, lifeless on the ground, from resurfacing.

"Sammy?" Dean asked softly and then there was a rustle of bed sheets against jeans, a breeze of air, a shuffled step against the dirty motel carpet. When Sam opened his eyes again it was to the sensation of Dean's shoulder brushing his arm. His brother had moved from the bed opposite him to the spot on the mattress beside him.

"It was a vision." Sam met Dean's gaze, watching the confusion and worry there morph into disbelief.

"A vision?" Dean repeated incredulously. "As in your demonic-powers from Azazel kinda vision? The kind you have6+n't had in what, fifteen years?"

Sam pressed his lips together. "Maybe Chuck brought them back somehow."

"Okay, hold on for a second." Dean lifted a palm, a deep frown marring his forehead. "You're telling me that Chuck brought back your demon powers on top of unleashing 3 billion souls from hell on earth? For what? Added dramatical effect?"

"I don't know." Sam shrugged. "I don't know why he did it, Dean. But what I felt and what I saw, it wasn't just a memory or flashback or a dream, okay? It was a vision."

Dean got up again, a hand clamped over his mouth. He started pacing the length of the room, his expression closed off and guarded as he processed the news. "Okay."

"Okay?" Sam huffed out because he had expected more outrage, hell, maybe even more backtalk about how Sam surely had some sort of mental break.

"Yeah, I mean not okay-okay. But we'll figure it out. If this is Chuck throwing another hurdle at us, I say we deal with it." Dean lifted a shoulder as if this was all just another ghost or evil spirit to gank. As though all of this was just another day in the office.

Despite the gravity of the situation and the raging headache Sam felt pulsing in his temples, his lips curled up into a sad, little smile. "You're taking this surprisingly well."

Sam could tell that Dean wasn't taking this lightly. He knew his older brother was just as clueless and helpless and utterly overwhelmed by this latest revelation as Sam was, but somehow Dean still managed to be hopeful enough for the both of them in a seemingly impossible situation.

"Look, am I thrilled that your creepy premonitions are back? Hell no, I'm not. But we've dealt with them before and we'll do it again. Easy, right?"

"Yeah," Sam huffed out, not feeling convinced. "Easy."

"What did you see, anyway?" Dean suddenly asked as if the thought only occurred to him now. "When you were out?"

Sam's stomach dropped, the half-hearted smile slipping from his smile. He ducked his head, suddenly unable to look at his brother for the fear of his memories resurfacing. He couldn't look into Dean's eyes and be reminded of the same dull, lifeless expression on his brother's face. And until his dying day, he never wanted to hear another rendition of Dean's broken pleading of 'Sammy, please… Please,' again, never wanted to hear Dean use his beloved nickname with the same level of desperation saturating every goddamn syllable. As if he was desperately trying to break through to a Sam that was long lost, a Sam that had taken on another fight with the devil…and lost.

"Sam?" Dean urged. "What did you see?"

Sam shivered, tongue sticking to the roof of his dry mouth.

He lifted his saddened, guilt-heavy gaze to meet Dean's. "I saw you falling after I – after Lucifer – snapped your neck."

Dean gaped at him for a second, a million emotions flicking across face. "You saw what now?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but I could feel it, Dean," Sam admitted low under his breath. "It was like a ripple in the air, like a shift of gravity or something. The second Chuck snapped his fingers at that graveyard I could feel that something had changed. Like… like I still got that connection to him- to Lucifer."

Dean was quiet, the silence dragging out uncomfortably between them and Sam's heart sank with dread. Fifteen years they'd been on the road together, fifteen years of brotherhood and companionship and so many goddamn things had happened between them. And Sam had tried hard to redeem himself, to make up for his mistakes, for all the ways in which he'd let Dean down, but even still, none of his sacrifices had ever fully cleansed his soul from this… demonic defilation.

"I think whatever Chuck might have done to unleash all these souls from hell, maybe he let more out than just demons and monsters. I mean, I thought he was done with us, you know?" Sam huffed out a humorless snicker, shaking his head at his own naivety. "I thought he'd just wreak havoc on earth and move on. 'cause that's what he does, he abandons bad drafts and leaves most of his books unfinished. But we're his favorites, Dean… we're his favorite story."

Dean listened to every word he said, never once moving, never interrupting and Sam eventually gathered enough strength to look back up at his brother through a veil of tears. "What if he's not done with us, yet? I mean what if he takes our worst fears, our worst enemies and brings them back for some sort of final showdown?"

Dean was quiet for a second or two after Sam was finished and when he eventually moved again, it was to turn his back on Sam. For a brief moment, Sam's entire stomach lurched with panic – with unreasonable, totally unjustified fear that Dean was going to grab his keys and take off, that after so many years of dealing with Sam's crap, Dean had finally had enough. But instead, Dean grabbed a bottle of pills from his duffle.

"I want you to listen to me, now." Walking back over to where Sam was still sitting on the edge of the bed, Dean crouched down before him and uncapped the bottle of Advil. "That son of a bitch has been pushing us around like chess pieces our whole fucking lives, Sam. He's been toying with us, tormenting us in the worst ways imaginable, over and over and over again. But this right here, is where we draw the line, you hear me?"

Dean rolled two pills onto his outstretched palm and put them on the bedside table next to Sam.

"We're not just two mindless, two-dimensional characters he made up. You and I—" Dean stabbed a finger into Sam's chest. "We're the guys who saved the world. We are the guys who defeated Michael and Lucifer and the freaking Grim Reaper—"

"And Hitler," Sam added with a watery smile, causing Dean to crack up as well.

"Damn right, little brother." Dean smirked and then held Sam's gaze for a moment longer, both of them growing serious again. "Look, Sam. I know you're scared. I know this is crazy – like, even-for-us-crazy. But if the past fifteen years have taught me anything, than it's that nobody, not even the devil or God All-freaking-Mighty can put a stop to us if we don't want them to."

Sam pressed his lips together, the words rippling through him with all the emotional subtlety of a sledgehammer and Sam was just so damn grateful for this, for their unbreakable bond, for having someone who loved him so unconditionally that even the possibility of dying at Sam's hand didn't scare him off.

"I don't know if I can go through this again, Dean," Sam admitted. "What if I'm not strong enough to fight him off a second time? And if this vision comes true—"

"If it really comes to that, and that's one big-ass 'if', then I'll die knowing that it's not your fault and that you did everything you could to stop him." Dean sighed. "Look, Sammy. I don't know what else this bastard has planned. Maybe he'll bring back the mark next, or the goddamn trials. Hell, maybe we'll wake up tomorrow and it's Leviathan Central. I don't know. But what I do know is that we'll fight him every goddamn step along the way and if we do go down, we'll go down swinging."

"Together?" The words were out before Sam could stop himself.

Dean was quiet for a second and Sam could see the emotions warring on his face. Because while fighting the good fight together was okay, Dean had never been able to see a future where Sam wasn't eighty-years old and married and sitting in a rocking chair, somewhere with a loving family. Only problem was, that Sam didn't want that future. Not if Dean wasn't sitting in that damn rocking chair right along with him. He had said it once before and he would say it however many times it would take for Dean to understand: If they did die, by God's hand or by their own, they'd have to do it together, this time. There just was no other option for them. Sam understood that now, and he wanted, no – he needed for Dean – to see it, too.

Dean closed his eyes and then he opened them again, looking older than Sam had ever seen him before, weary and exhausted and finally able to agree to the one thing that pained him more to think about than he was ever going to admit. "If that's how our story's supposed to end, then, yeah. Together."

Sam nodded, sniffing and wiping the residual wetness from his cheeks.

"Promise me," he said, meeting Dean's eyes in a clash of colors and emotion. "That we'll choose our own ending. No matter what. We won't let him decide for us."

In another life, he would have been embarrassed. Hell, before all of this started, before heaven and hell and the goddamn apocalypse and losing Dean in more ways and for more times than he'd ever thought possible, Sam would have been embarrassed for the tears and the way his voice wavered, but they'd long past the stage of embarrassment.

With 3 billion vengeful, hell-corrupted souls on their case, their entire life's work as hunters undone and the return of his psychic abilities, Sam thought he was allowed to have a bit of a breakdown.

"I promise," Dean gave back, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly beneath his skin as he swallowed.

Sam nodded, relief pulsing through his veins at the words.

"Okay."

"Okay," Dean echoed, and tapped the water bottle Sam had only taken two small sips from earlier. "Now drink some more of this, take the pills, get into a comfortable set of clothes and I'll get some bandages to redress the wound with. You hungry? I saw a diner not too far from here."

Dean patted Sam's knee and then ruffled his hair and Sam felt himself leaning into the touch, soaking up every word.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah."

"You ever think we're Chuck's favorite because of this?"

"Because of what?" Dean's forehead creased.

"You know… because we've got something that most people don't."

"Yeah, like what? Good looks?"

Sam pulled a half-hearted bitch face at his brother's joke. "No, Dean. Think about it. Chuck must have hundreds of drafts. In some of them we're not even related. I'm just wondering if that's the price we pay for, you know, for what we have."

Dean thought about it, the words sinking in before the emotional blow hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. And Sam could see the exact moment where Dean – in typical 'Dean' fashion – realized how dangerously close they were venturing into chick-flick territory before his older brother gave a roll of his eyes. "Take your pills, Sammy."

There was no real heat in the words. In fact, Sam was pretty sure Dean's eyes had softened in that warm, fuzzy way and the way he had said 'Sammy' was gentler than usually. And when he ordered all of Sam's favorite comfort food off the diner menu and then proceeded to clean and bandage Sam's wound with enough tenderness to make Sam bashful about it, Sam took that for the answer it really was.

Maybe they had pulled the short straw in all of this. Maybe it was unfair that they had to be the ones to fix the world, that they always got caught up right in the middle of this never-ending tug-of-war between heaven and hell and Michael end Lucifer and God himself.

But if it was a choice between this godforsaken world with billions of evil spirits roaming the earth or literally any other version of Sam's life that Dean wasn't a part of, then it wasn't a choice at all.

The End.

A/N: I've had a pretty bad case of writer's block and I'm slowly finding my way back to fiction after a long break. Anything at all you want to share, any sort of feedback, any thoughts or theories about the new season or a simple 'hi' are very very welcome. 3 Hope you all enjoyed this new piece! Thanks for reading!