Author:Mirrordance

Title: Crossing

Summary:Three versions of the last hunt that finally pushed Sam to leave for Stanford. The lines blur between good and evil on (1)a job that forces John to choose between his sons; (2)a mission to kill another hunter; and (3)a job that requires Sam to kill a child to save his brother.

Hi guys!

First off, lots of love and thanks to all who read, favorited and *especially* all who reviewed my last fic, Consent. I owe quite a bit of people some responses, but RL has just been driving me crazy, and once in awhile I get these compulsions to post a story that I have to get rid of just so I can get to the host of other things I need to do (I work and go to grad school at the same time - I am enriching my mind even as I lose it, haha). Will get to those very soon, as well as my pending projects. I just felt I wanted to post this, because it is one story with three stories inside, and the one below is a completed one shot :)

Anyway, as always, c&c's are welcome; I'm slow to reply but I read them and feed on them and draw inspiration from them, so lots of love to those who do review, but I do thank everyone for taking the time to read my works anyway :) Hope you enjoy and let it relieve you of your own RL stresses, haha, writing it certainly takes a the edge off of mine :) Okay. Without further ado:

" " "

1: Departures

The lines blur between good and evil on a job

that forces John to choose between his sons

Late Spring 2001

" " "

Not that any of them would ever admit it, but they all teared up a little bit, at Sam's graduation. Dean was unabashedly beaming proud, and John looked stuffed but suffused beside him. The two men were wearing noting out of the ordinary Winchester fare, but Dean felt a little bit overdressed when Sam finally joined them at the end of the ceremonies, with people looking at them and Sam standing there with his family and all his awards.

John reverted to his defensive mode, which made him gruff and taciturn. Dean's version was a loud and lewd. Sam was jumpy; proud of himself but uncertain if his father wanted to be somewhere else, if his brother got bored, if any of them thought it was cheesy. But all their eyes shone - tellingly- in the bright sunlight of midday. They glistened, looked like jewels, and their gazes glinted against each other's. It was warm for spring, and the grasses and the trees were at the very height of their verdant green.

"We've talked about this."

It was the tone, really, that finally dragged him to the present.

There was an odd timbre to his father's voice that came out only in the direst situations; it was part defiant growl, part low-voiced denial, part-taut-tense agitation, part mounting panic, part misplaced determination. It was such a rich, deep tone, Dean thought, nuanced, layered, conflicted.

He first heard it at age four – a bundle stuffed into his arms and a command he'd hear and heed forever. He'd heard it again shortly after that – mom's not coming out of there, Dean-o- and then sporadically since, for one reason or other. It sounded like a man at the end of his rope, but hanging on damn tight.

That tone always had a hold on him; it snapped him to attention, reined him in, brought him into certain perspectives, certain realities. Like the fact that the verdant greens of Sam's graduation day has come and gone, only to be replaced by cold stone, gray clouds and frigid air that hummed with the mounting energy of a storm, eager to unleash all that built-up tension.

"Yeah and we'll talk about it again," snapped another voice, one that Dean had to think about to recall. Buck, he remembered, and images of the scraggly-thin man came to mind. Buck was a seasoned hunter who dragged the Winchesters on one of those rare paying gigs: a long history of deaths on a treacherous mountain used to be attributed to seasonal storms, up until Buck called up John and said it's a helluva bigger mess about some sort of vindictive ghost. The climbing season was coming by and maybe someone ought to do something about it all, finally, before someone else died. The search for the body was a lengthy mess but between Buck, John, Dean and Sam, they got the job done.

Winchesters being Winchesters, however... they get paid in cash or kind for a job and somehow life just gets back at them in some other way.

It's why dad sounds like that, Dean thought. It was why he was flat on his back on hard ground not at all softened by the sleeping bag he was lying on, why he was smothered in what he imagined were all the blankets in their cave-camp, why he had such a hard time opening his eyes, why he couldn't remember having fallen asleep, why he felt so numbed by cold that he felt nothing, not even pain...

Pain...

He gasped in remembrance. There had been much of that, what, hours ago? Dean didn't know where it went, but that was not to say he felt better. He felt... he felt a little bit lost, detached, drifting. He drifted like the winds that were swirling at the mouth of the cave they used as temporary shelter. The breeze kicked at snow, like a bull pissing itself off before charging.

"Shut up," John growled at Buck, "He's awake, so shut your goddamn mouth."

Dean felt his father shuffle to his side.

"Dean you in there?" John asked, "Open your eyes for me."

He tried to comply. When he couldn't, he tried to speak. What came out was an alien gurgle that he decided to disown.

"You're all right," John told him quietly. Dean knew that tone too. It sounded like a lie, like how John sometimes says I'll be back in a few hours. He hated that tone in many ways. He hated it because he liked having his old man around and the tone meant he wasn't going to be. He hated it because he always had to pretend he believed it, for all their sakes. He hated it because Sam hated it, and he was always the one who had to put a salve on that particular wound.

Sam...

"John, he has a right to know--" Buck started.

Sam?!

"No," John barked.

Dean's heart sped up. His chest rose and fell, laboriously. Nothing hurt, nothing, and he almost missed the pain, missed how it made him feel more alive. He had to be alive... he had to be alive because he had to move, and he had to move because dad was using that damn tone again and Dean suddenly realized that his shaggy-haired stupid little-big brother was nowhere to be seen.

"Sam," he grunted out, and because the raspy voice that came out was unfamiliar, he thought maybe he hasn't spoken yet and so he said it again, "Sam."

"Your brother's just outside," John said, "Trying to get that damn radio working."

Dean finally managed to pry his eyes open. The words sounded true, and damned if he couldn't tell every time his father lied or not. But this was about Sam now, and he needed his eyes to look at his father too, needed to see if John's look matched his truthful tone.

John's gaze on him was over-warm in a way that Dean hadn't seen since... since... god, it was Sam's graduation again, and the three men went to a Mexican grill and stuffed themselves silly. John's phone rang in the middle of the meal and for a moment there Dean thought that it signaled the end of the unspoken celebration. He had instinctively double-timed on shoveling food in his mouth, and then stared at his father, just waiting on the order to move out. But John just glanced at his mobile and discreetly ignored the call. Dean's jaw dropped, and John told him to chew with his mouth shut. His father's eyes were lit up from inside, almost knowingly, and it was the best damn burito Dean had ever had, even if Sam's gaseous tendencies made the car ride--

Sam!

"He's all right, Dean," John told him soothingly, "You just take it easy."

"He won't be for long," Buck snapped and Dean watched, horrified, as his father rose from his side and grabbed the other hunter by the collar of his shirt. John enraged was a sight to be seen, and Buck's feet rose from the ground.

"You shut your mouth!" John commanded, as Buck kicked futilely at air.

"He's got a right to know!" Buck argued, "And me, Sam, hell even you, John, we deserve to live!"

John shook Buck angrily as he spoke, and when it looked like he was about to deck the bastard, Dean called out to his father.

"Dad, stop."

It was just a whisper, but John heard it as surely as he knew Dean had been awake even just by the change in his breathing from minutes ago. Buck was tossed on his ass a few steps away, and John was back beside Dean in a heartbeat.

"You're all right," John said again, and his voice shook at the end, there. His eyes watered, and he blinked at them, "Sam's all right, everyone's all right."

Dean looked at him searchingly, grabbed at his arm, "Right... to know what?"

"I'm gonna say it 'cos you can't," Buck said from across the room.

"Shut up!" John yelled at him, and made another move to rise except Dean's fingers kept him right where he was. The fingers wound around his arm in a deathgrip, and John remained kneeling by his son's side as Buck wisely kept away from them as he spoke.

"I'd appreciate you doing this for me if things were the other way around, kid," Buck said, "You know that, don't you Dean?"

"Buck..." John said, his tone suddenly different, almost...begging?, "Please. Please. Man to man, father to a father, Buck, I'm asking you: don't do this."

There was a long potent silence, and Dean wondered if it was just him, going away again. But it was Buck hesitating, as disarmed by John's tone as Dean himself was.

"I'm sorry John," Buck said, "Father to father... I got a kid I gotta come back to. I ain't dyin' here. I'm all he's got." He took a deep breath and said, "There's a storm coming up on this mountain, Dean. A big one, a killer for sure. We gotta get down from here man, and pronto. But no one's gettin' out in time if we have to carry you along with us."

Dean turned his eyes to his father's anguished ones, "Dad...?"

"Jesuschrist, Buck..."

"He deserves to know," Buck argued, "He's a grown man, Johnny. He deserves to know. I'm telling you now, Dean, and I'm sorry as I'll ever be about anything by saying this, but I don't think you're getting off of this mountain alive."

John's arm jerked in Dean's hold, and it really could have been a punch that would have taken Buck down except Dean was not going to let him go.

"Your daddy saw that injury same as me," Buck continued, "It's bad kid, I think even you know that. Now see, this storm's coming up soon, and we can't trek out of here in time to beat it if we bring you with us – 'sides... I don't think you're liable to make the trip down anyway. What I'm sayin' is... we bring you with us and we all die. We stay with you here and we all die."

"I'm not leaving him here," John growled at Buck.

"Dad..." Dean's eyes were wide as saucers, pregnant with all the horrid thoughts of his family dying because of him, "Dad--"

"No," John snapped at Dean, "You listen, Dean. No. No. I am not leaving you here."

"Please," Dean whispered, "Please... Sam..."

"Buck," John said, "You take Sam out of here, you get me? You take him, and I'll stay with Dean--"

"As long as Dean's breathin', Sam ain't getting off this mountain," Buck snapped, "If I knock him over the head and drag him out with me, neither of us are gonna make it. And you'll die if you stay here, John, you know it as well as I do. You got no supplies for a storm like this."

"I'll talk to Sam--"

There was that delusion part talking again, and Dean wished he could snort at his father. It was Buck who called him out on it.

"You got another son I don't know about?" Buck argued, "You know it same as me: as long as Dean's breathin, that kid ain't getting off this mountain. Lose one son or lose both, John, 's all I'm saying."

Dean's heart thundered in his ears. The answer was all at once simple but also impossibly hard.

"Dean," Buck called out to him quietly, and they were both probably thinking the same thing, "It kills me to say this, you know I'm a daddy too. But I'm gonna 'cos your father doesn't have the balls to say it and nor should he. The drugs you're on... I got one more here with me. I stick this in you and--"

"Shut up, Buck!" this time, John jerked free of Dean's hold and really did take a swing at the other hunter.

But Dean already knew what Buck meant. One more shot, and he'd overdose. One more shot and all the pain will go away forever. One more shot and then his dad and brother wouldn't have to die on a mountain with him. It wasn't such a bad way to go, was it? Painless, surrounded by the people he loved, even as he saved their lives. It wasn't such a bad way to go...

"Dad," Dean called out, but John was busy taking his frustration out on Buck, who pawed at him weakly. With a grunt, Dean twisted, tried to pull himself up to sit. And oh god how fragile and precious had that moment of pain-absence meant, because it sure reared up it's ugly, angry head now. Did he dare think he ever missed it? Was he so foolish?

He cried out in pain, coughed weakly into his hand. There was blood on his palm then, dark bold red of it, like that toga of Sam's, except Sam's was a bit shinier and the gleaming fabric had these lines that danced in the sun. He looked stupid and brilliant all at the same time... He looked both sad and happy. He took the podium for his valedictorian speech, looking insanely proud but also unbearably embarrassed. He was Dean's baby brother, but he looked so darn big up there.

John heard his cry and slammed Buck to the ground and ran to his son, pushing at him to lie back down. But Dean was tired of the ground and so he fought his father's grip. They ended up wrapped around each other, John sitting and bearing Dean's slumped weight. Dean wanted to sit up as much as he was able, wanted to meet his father's eyes squarely, wanted to show his father that he was fully in possession of himself, fully able to make choices that were this important.

Sam had a sheet of paper in his hand, but he never even looked at it.

"I am a professional 'new kid,'" he began, and those dimples of his winked, even from a distance. Dean thought that Sam looked a little bit shy and unquestionably earnest, and for the first time since he was old enough at age 6 to decide that it was un-cool to think so, he actually found himself conceding that his little brother was just so darn cute sometimes.

"So standing here in front of you," Sam went on, "It's not just an honor, it's... I want to say miracle, I want to say blessing, I want to say luck, but I'm thinking maybe it all comes down to statistical anomaly. I am a freak. Every high school has at least one freak. Maybe two. Maybe two dozen. But that's just one story, and everyone here has a hell of one to tell. Four years... if these walls could talk."

He inhaled and gathered his breath, and the sound was a quick swish on the microphone, it sounded sharp and so alive.

"It's my choice," Dean gasped out as he pulled away from his father, so that John was looking right at his face and his burning eyes, "My choice."

"No!" John barked out, and it sounded almost petulant and child-like, which was something new. Dean's never heard this one before. "No, Dean, no. You're not going like this, I won't let you. You don't get to do this for us, you don't get to."

Sam continued on, speaking both seriously and humorously of the more infamous events of his high school years. He dropped names of students and teachers, had the crowd alternately roaring and wistful, and they were like some orchestra that heeded his every command. Rise and fall, loud and quiet, pitch-perfect, everyone playing along to the graceful movements of his masterful hand. Dean always knew Sam was a talker, but this was just smooth. He was a captivating manipulator of the highest order, just catching everyone's attention and holding on tight.

Dean stared at his father, desperate to be looked at. He looked at him long and hard and also nakedly for the first time in a long time. He was undisguised, unmasked, and he hoped his eyes and his face yelled out what he felt for his family. He'd die for his father or Sammy in a heartbeat; he would never be the death of them. But if his father could never accept that, then he was free to think whatever he wanted, as long as he was alive.

"Then for Sammy," Dean whispered, "Okay? For Sammy."

Water leaked from the corners of John's eyes, "You don't get to do this..."

"I want to," Dean begged, his breath hitching, "You gotta... you gotta get outta here, dad. Take... take care o' Sam, okay? M-more than... than... th-the thing that k-k-killed m-mom, you j-just g-gotta..."

"No, Dean--"

"...I could go on all day," Sam continued wistfully, "Everyone I've known, all the things I've seen here. I'm a professional 'new kid,' I told you, and I like to think it means there are things I pay attention to that others don't notice, because it's normal to them. For instance I still know the name of the very first person who was gracious enough to talk to me here and what she said to me. I'm still crushing on her a little bit and I can guarantee you that she won't remember, and that I won't tell. It's just one more story for these walls, from just one more guy who happened to pass through. 'Cos you know... we're really all just passing through. None of these is ours – not the walls, not the youth, not the time. The moment we walked in here we were already walking away from here and today, we're just closing the door behind us."

"If we're doing this we have to do this before Sam gets back," Buck said quietly, coming up behind John, the syringe in his hand, "If we're gonna do this, we gotta do it now."

"My choice dad," Dean insisted, reaching for the syringe, "For Sammy, right?"

Buck handed the syringe to Dean, but John closed his own digits around theirs to halt the exchange, still hesitating, still unsure.

"It's okay, dad," Dean said softly, "It's okay."

"It's so easy to think that there is no point to all of this," Sam went on, "I'll never use the equation for combustion again, I'll always be bad at carpentry and cooking, and why the hell am I studying impossible triangles? Why do I have to deal with people I'll never see again? Why do teachers and administrators get to judge me? Don't these bullies know their time's almost up? Don't the beautiful people know they're going to get older? When will nerds ever get a life? You're in high school and you keep waiting for it to be over, like you're just as eager to fast forward and see what you'll be in the end, when the doors close and you're outside. Who are you, and where will you be? But the point is that the answer to that is a big hunk of nothing without everything we've been through together. Unquestionably we've damaged each other, scarred each other. But we've also built each other. Almost always, the kind of a person comes out in the end - if you graduated from the right place surrounded by the right people - is someone better than whoever came in."

John let go of their hands, and he looked at Dean hungrily, like there was so much to say that words had run out, become irrelevant and inadequate. Buck politely left the Winchesters alone, walked toward the mouth of the cave. Dean gripped the syringe tightly, and his miserably shaking hands tried to uncap it. He didn't ask for his father's help; he knew that being a witness to this was hard enough for John, and that being a party to his son's suicide would just about break him.

"This was the right kind of place," Sam said, "And the right kind of people. I came in as a freak new kid and came out in a shiny toga and a few minutes to myself up on this stage. The world feels so large, suddenly, and looking around... I know I'm not the only who feels like this. The world is about possibility. The rest of life awaits, maybe... maybe real life itself awaits. And this... this is truly ours now. Ours to make great, ours to fail. Our rewards to reap, our consequences to pay. Ours."

Dean took a deep breath when the cap came off the needle. It dropped on the fabric of the blankets and their clothes, lost in the sea of cloth between his father and himself. A shot to the heart would be quick, wouldn't it? Right over the heart...

"This damn radio--" he suddenly heard from the cave entrance, and it sounded like the voice in his waking dreams.

"Sam, why don't you..." Buck began, but Sam had gone into the cave closely enough to see that there was something going on.

"Dean!" he exclaimed, and he bounded forward. He had a small smile on his face, as if the sun shone just because his brother was now awake. Dean put the syringe down on his side, away from Sam's line of sight.

"Sam," Dean greeted him quietly, with a small smile.

"Hey, man," Sam said, and he lowered himself to the floor at a crouch. His forehead scrunched in worry, "Should he be sitting up like this, dad?"

John swallowed thickly, unable to find his voice.

"Dad--"

"You were sayin' something about the radio?" John snapped at him, snapped back to himself.

"Yeah just that I still can't get it to work," Sam said, "But I'll try again in a few minutes, all right? I just wanted to check in on Dean. Dude, I am glad to see you awake."

Dean's eyes watered, and he blinked at them defiantly, at the idea that Sam would leave again soon, that this would be their last conversation, and that he'd come back to a corpse, "Yeah?"

"I know, I know," Sam smiled, "Chick, right?"

"Always," Dean grinned.

"Anyway I'm back to work," Sam said as he rose up. He patted the blanket by Dean's booted feet, "One air rescue coming right up. I'll get the radio to work, Dean, I swear it. You just gotta hang on."

Dean closed his eyes, and the tears he's been keeping in leaked out, leaked with his regrets and his unspoken apologies and his unfortunate last words. Sam caught the damned crying, and he lowered himself down on the ground again, reached for Dean's shoulder.

"Dean..." he hesitated, "Hey man, come on--"

"Don't, Sam," Dean growled, turning his face away from his brother's, "Lemme alone."

He meant in more ways than one, but Sam was kinda dense like that.

"Dean..." Sam breathed, but when he shifted to lean in closer, his left hand landed on the slim, plastic cap of the syringe. He ignore it for a microsecond, until something clicked, and his eyes shot to Dean's watery, regretful gaze.

Sam stared at him in disbelief, and then he looked around and found the syringe in Dean's hand. Sam mercilessly snatched it away, and he looked at his brother in accusation.

"Sam..." Dean began, but Sam's eyes were murderous, just rage-blind.

"I hate you right now," Sam said darkly, voice low and dangerous.

"You wouldn't..." Dean struggled to joke, "Wouldn't want that to be the last thing you said to me, would you?"

Sam's eyes could have popped out of his head. "I told you I'd get it done and I will, Dean. Hold on. You gotta hold on."

"There's no time," Dean argued, "No time, Sam... you gotta get out of here, you all have to. Please just gimme it. It'll be fast, and things will stop hurting. It'll save me, man, it'll save all of us."

"No," Sam said vehemently, "No."

"Then leave me," Dean begged, "Take that with you, I don't care, as long as you leave. I'll hold on as long as I could, Sam, I swear, I'll wait for you to come back and bring somebody. But please leave."

"I can't do that," Sam shook his head.

"It's too late for me," Dean insisted, coughing again and there was that damned blood again, reminding them all that they were running out of time in so many ways, as if they could forget it, "I want you to live, Sam. You staying here? It'll kill me, I swear to god it will--"

Sam's eyes watered, but there was never any consideration in them, of Dean's suggestion. Not a smudge, not a mite, none at all. He turned his angry gaze his father's way, "You were gonna let him."

"He wouldn't've," Dean gasped, "He wouldn'tve had t-to if... if any of y-you y-yahoos j-just got out of here, all right? P-p-please, Sammy... You g-g-gotta g-get out--"

"No, you stupid jerk," Sam said, "No, all right?" he turned to his father angrily, "How could you even consider this? How could you lend yourself to this? What kind of a father-- Mom would--"

"Don't you bring her into this!" John yelled, aggravated by his own guilt and the ghost of Mary always lingering in his mind, glancing at him from behind the eyes she shared with Dean's, "Don't you dare; you never knew her, you never--"

"What mother can live with this, huh, dad?" Sam asked, "Look at this... look at what hunting's made you, dad. You were gonna sit here and watch your son kill himself."

"If he didn't," Buck exclaimed from the sidelines, "We all die--"

"Stay out of it!" John and Sam snapped at him simultaneously. Any other day and it would have been funny.

"I can't believe it, dad," Sam said quietly, "You were gonna let him do it. You were really gonna let him do it."

"It was m-my choice," Dean argued, "S-still isss..."

"No," Sam said, "Not this one, Dean. This is all on me."

"Shut up, S-Sam!" Dean growled, "You d-don't g-get t-to die here 'c'cos of me."

"And you don't get to die here 'cos of me!" Sam argued.

"Dad help me," Dean pleaded, "Grab it, I g-gotta--"

"No," Sam seethed, "Put a damn lid on this right now, dad. End it for crying out loud, it never even should have gotten this far!"

John looked from one son to the other.

"I can make the radio work," Sam said in a bold voice, "I can get us help. Please, dad. Please. Let me do this. I can do this."

"Get outta here," Dean countered, "Get him outta here."

"I can't," John looked at Sam apologetically, "I can't lose you both, Sammy."

Sam closed his eyes, ran a shaky hand over his face. One hand still held the syringe he had confiscated from Dean and he was apparently never going to let it go.

"He got hurt because of me, did you know?" Sam said spitefully, "Hell, of course you do, 'cos it's always been that way. You drilled it into him from day one. He always gets hurt because of me. And now he's supposed to just die for me too, is that it? You gotta... you gotta trust me, sometimes dad. I can take care of myself. And I can take care of Dean too. Shit, dad... sometimes I wonder if things would be better if I was just... if I just..."

"Sam?" Dean asked him gently, coaxing him to continue.

"Nothing," Sam finished, before he rose to his feet and grabbed the radio. He didn't let go of the syringe. Dean guessed no one could take that from him, someone would have to pry it from cold, dead hands, by the steely way Sam was looking at them all, daring them to defy him.

He looked so scared and he somehow also looked so brave, his big-little brother...

"We're gonna try this again," Sam said, "You – you're not going anywhere, Dean, you understand me? I promised you, and I'm gonna get you help. And you--" he turned to his father, "He dies on your watch and I'll never forgive you."

With that, he walked away, shoulders squared and proud and sure.

"Dad, get him," Dean whispered to his father, even as he clung to him, "Dad, stop him. Dad, get him. Dad, stop him. Dad, get him..." it petered off to a murmured mantra, as the world faded away.

" " "

"We've talked about this."

It was the tone, really, that finally dragged him to the present.

There was an odd timbre to his father's voice that came out only in the direst situations; it was part defiant growl, part low-voiced denial, part-taut-tense agitation, part mounting panic, part misplaced determination. It was such a rich, deep tone, Dean thought, nuanced, layered, conflicted.

He first heard it at age four – a bundle stuffed into his arms and a command he'd hear and heed forever. He'd heard it again shortly after that – mom's not coming out of there, Dean-o- and then sporadically since, for one reason or other. It sounded like a man at the end of his rope, but hanging on damn tight.

That tone always had a hold on him; it snapped him to attention, reined him in, brought him into certain perspectives, certain realities. Like the fact that the cold hard ground of the cave and the whipping storm winds of the cold mountains and his pains and hurts have come and gone, only to be replaced by a soft bed against his back, the muted sounds of machines hooked to his body whirring and beeping, the fading murmur of conversations drifting out the door of his, he figured, hospital room.

"Yeah and we'll talk about it again." Sam, Dean realized, and it was a tone that sounded so much like his father's that he wondered if John had gotten wet and greminlined up another version of himself.

"This job..." Sam said, "It's gonna kill us one day, dad. All of us. You understand that? You understand what that means? Do you even know it?"

"You're not—"

"Dying on your watch?" Sam scoffed, and the mockery was just dripping off of his loaded words, "Really."

"Sam..." John's voice was strained, like he wanted to get mad but just could not find the energy to dredge it from, "If there's anything worth dyin' for--"

"Yeah, yeah I know," Sam snapped, "I got the sales pitch, dad, I got it a decade ago. I get why we do it, I get it, I do. But how come we get to die, when we haven't even lived yet? We haven't lived yet. All this... this isn't a life. Or it is, whatever. It's not mine. The mistakes, the decisions, everything that led us here... I feel like I'm paying for someone else."

"Keep quiet, Sam," John commanded, "Dean's awake."

"I know," Sam said quietly, "I want him to hear. He's got a right to know."

"Right," Dean echoed, as his eyes fluttered open, "Right to know what?"

"I'm going away," Sam said.

"No he's not," John growled.

"Yes I--" Sam cut himself off, sighed. "This isn't the time or the place."

Dean blinked at his brother, licked at his dry lips, "Va... vacation?"

Sam laugh-sobbed, ran a weary hand over his face, "Yeah. Yeah, Dean. You can say that."

The End

October 8, 2009

Coming Up: Dead Man Walking. The lines blur between good and evil on a mission to kill another hunter

Thanks for reading and 'til the next post!