I couldn't help to write a tag to the wonderfully depressing, Abandon All Hope. I couldn't wait two months to see how the guys are going to handle this loss, so I let my imagination take over.

Please let me know what you think. Last part will be up shortly. Happy Holidays to everyone! :)

Sam wandered in the shadows of Bobby's house, unable to endure the torturous silence that always settled after someone had died. He was blissfully numb, mind still stupefied by the incomprehensible happenings of the day. The sheer facts of it—hellhounds, monologuing Lucifer, mass graves, a supernatural bomb, a useless sacrifice—made him both chuckle with macabre laughter and gasp around the tightness in his chest. There was nowhere to go from here. There was no hope to end what he had started, and no words to express how tragic it was that Jo and Ellen had died because of his good intentions. So he walked the house, picking up the discarded shot glasses still smudged with Ellen's lipstick and Jo's copious research, ignoring her girly handwriting, the doodles on the corner of the page. He cleaned to keep his hands busy and mind focused solely on the task at unimportant tasks at hand—arranging, organizing, tidying.

He stopped at the flutter of ruffled green leather, retrieving it from its place in the corner of the couch, straps folded over the arm. The leather was supple and luxurious, screaming of the designer handbags Jess had coveted; one Sam worked months to buy her for Christmas. It was undeniably feminine and a glaring misfit in Bobby's Ramshackle House of Testosterone. He sifted through it with care, fingers brushing over tubes of lipgloss, a beat-up wallet, stray dollar bills, a soft lime green scarf tied to the strap, and even an ELLE magazine like the precious artifacts they now were.

It wasn't the weapons bag of a second-generation hunter. It was the purse of a young woman who lusted for stiletto boots and a sequined cocktail dress, who circled recipes for entertaining and exercises to strength her core. It wasn't the duffel of a solider who was fighting the literal war for the world. It was a piece of rare normalcy, the testament of a woman who wanted more, who longed for a different life but never knew how to attain it.

It was the thing Jo left behind after she died in a sticky pool of her own blood and a pink tangle of intestines.

No one should ever die in Sam's place, and his life was filled with people who did, starting with their mother and with Dean (and even Pamela) somewhere near the rear. It sounded silly that two more people were added to that list: beautiful Jo with her steadfast crush on Dean and her never-ending questions about Sam's time at Stanford; and Ellen, a woman he'd come to regard as a surrogate mother. Sam couldn't even look them in the face to say goodbye, because it wasn't right. It wasn't fair. It should have been him.

In the quiet, he heard the echoes of Ellen's cries and Jo's dying breaths, and his entire body shuttered, twisting with nausea and the dark burn of grief. He lovingly tucked the purse back in the corner of the couch, barely noticing that his hands had picked up some of the flowery perfume from the magazine samples.

He refused to let the despair fester into anger as Sam would have done in the past. Instead, he'd let it curl and bend into something more productive, something like redemption. Jaw clenched with determination, Sam pocketed his wallet, grabbed his keys to Ellen's car and his own to the Impala, and slipped out of the house. Under the starless sky, he dug into the Impala's hidden armory, swaddling away his father's favorite knife, the one that was willed to him after he died. The handle was smooth and weathered, matching the calluses of his father's massive hands. It was one of the things he'd drooled over as a child, and Dean had given it to him.

In a special compartment, he'd retrieved the silver necklace Jess had given him. He'd looped it around his neck, fisting the delicate key charm. She'd given it to him for his birthday, mere months before she'd burned, and told him it was the key to her heart. His friends made fun of him for wearing it, but he'd never cared. He was going to marry her, and he knew it the moment she'd given him that necklace. He tucked it under his shirt, next to his heart.

Next, Sam retrieved Dean's stupid "Cocky" belt buckle. He'd won it at a casino pie eating contest in Atlantic City , and wore it like it was an Olympic gold medal. Sam did too after Dean had died. He switched belts, looped it around his narrow waist.

He walked methodically to Ellen's truck, climbing in and adjusting the seat. It smelled like her, the bizarre cocktail of whiskey and Ivory soap.

His mother had given him his life, had protected him from evil personified, and he'd took that seriously as he lived, wanting to become a lawyer to help as many people as he could to make her fatal bravery worth something. Lately, it was all that kept him from blowing his brains out, all that kept him fighting. He did now, too, seeing her face, soft and lovely, as he had in Lawrence four years ago.

He walked methodically to Ellen's truck, climbing in and adjusting the seat. It smelled like Ellen, whiskey intertwined with Ivory soap.

Armed with the possessions of his loved ones, those taken by wickedness, Sam raced out of Bobby's junkyard to carve out some good.

**

The light stirring behind his eyes looked like hellfire. Dean snapped awake, alert, but vision blurred by disorientation and darkness. He listened and blinked, willing his eyes to adjust to the lowlight. He was lying prone on a bed in one of Bobby's spare bedrooms. He shifted in the slightest of movements, but that triggered a breath-stealing throb in the back of his head that sluiced down his neck, pooling into his shoulders and back in a puddle of molten lava. He squeezed his eyes shut, fisting the top sheet of the bed he was lying prone on. After a forty-year tour of hell, Dean wasn't a lightweight when it came to pain, but he couldn't handle this ontop of the grief. The physical agony was easily outdone by the emotional. Jo was gone. Ellen was gone. And Dean needed oblivion.

He licked his dry lips, canting his head upward, he drew in a wheezing, painful breath and called for his brother. Sam was hurting and probably just as traumatized as Dean was, but he'd at least bring him some painkillers and solace.

Instead of the lumbering studder-step of Sam's enormous feet, he heard the whirring glide of wheels.

Dean jerked and groaned when Bobby gently pulled back the covers and eased an icepack onto his battered back and shoulder. A rough pressed flat on his lower back as Dean mashed his face into the pillow, enduring the crescendo of pain that seized up his muscles like the throwing of deadbolts. He breathed through it as tears seeped out of his eyes and into the scratchy cotton. Finally, the pain subsided to tolerable levels and Dean turned his head to the left, panting.

"Devil packs a whollup, huh?" Bobby whispered with sympathy. "I got some drugs for ya, it'll do better than the Jack."

"Where's Sam?" Dean croaked. He wanted his brother close.

Bobby didn't answer. He merely busied himself with setting the break on his wheelchair and expertly shifting from it to the bed. Dean forced his eyes open to regard the older hunter, but couldn't move enough to see his face. "You sneaky old bastard," Dean cursed without venom, "where's my brother?"

"He's gone, Dean. He'll be back."

"Gone? What do you mean…he wouldn't just…leave…" Dean willed himself up, pushing against weakness and the throbbing in his head.

Bobby shrugged, eyes hollow, shoulders slumped. His face tightened sourly, like he did when he didn't want to tell the truth.

Standing up was infinitely trickier than sitting. He shuffled out of the bedroom, loping with the concussion-borne slant of the bloorboards. He knew the house inside and out and could maneuver it half-conscious and blind if he needed to (and had), but that was before Bobby lost his legs and he and Sam had spent a week outfitting it with ramps and chair lifts. The bookshelf he intended on leaning against at the end of the hall was gone. He pitched forward, reflexes sloppy and wild. The arm that jutted out, scrambling for a banister overshot, and hit the light fixture. Dean whited out for a second when he hit the wall. Glass the antique glass shattered around him as he slid to the floor, abandoned by strenghtless legs, too. "Sam!" He called, feebly, frantically.

Their father was the one who struck out on benders, leaving his young sons to imagine graphic scenairos of his death or, when they were older, driving from state to state, searching for their father. Sometimes they found him in the drunk tank, other times, hospitals. The relief halted the maddening worry, but it had left them permanently affected. Hence the brothers had an unwritten rule that they always checked in. Even those years when they weren't talking, Sam would text him if he was leaving California on breaks and or road trips. Dean would text him coordinates of new hunts.

Sam's departure, after the Harvelles' deaths, after the betrayal and the separation, ignited a raw ache and a grief Dean simply couldn't process. He leaned against the wall on the floor and felt disconnected, numb and shut down. He blinked again, vision kaleidoscoping, heart pumping sluggishly. He saw wheels in front of him again, and closed his eyes.

"He's done this before," Bobby said, his voice echoed like they were both underwater. For an instant, Dean thought maybe a God-sent flood had submerged the house and he could be done fighting and losing.

"What?"

"Sam…he's done this before," Bobby repeated.

Dean knew his brain was swollen or broken, but he couldn't remember a time when Sam had ever abandoned him when Dean was hurt (except, that one time he tried to kill him, but Dean rarely allowed himself to think about that). "No, he—You mean when I was dead?"

"Yeah. Before he left for good, he'd light out of here, fall off the radar for a few days. Never took your car though, and it's still here now, so...he'll be back."

"Hell wasn't chasin' him then, Bobby." Dean muttered on the verge of hysteria.

"Lucifer wasn't," the older man amended, "but you were gone, and I'll be damned if the boy wasn't in Hell."

**

In the eyes of the law, hunters were criminals of the worst kind—sociopaths obsessed with death, who defrauded good people to fund their lives of grave desecration and ritual murder. Their father had trained the boys to be thieves and cons years before he had handed them a gun or a knife. Until he knew better and sometimes even when he did, he stole to survive, swiping bandages from drug stores, picking locks and hotwiring cars. Fortunately, being trained as a criminal made him good at hunting them, too. With Lucifer free, hell was quite literally flooding earth. More demons were free than ever and they mixed in with the shady underbelly of humanity.

So Sam went on a hunting spree.

He'd eradicated any evil he could find, supernatural or not and moved onto the next. He'd stopped a carjacker, caught a pedophile who'd skipped bail, exorcised a band of demons who were somehow intertwined with a string of meth labs in Iowa. The trail of the dealers lead to a shady bar in the Badlands. In red shadows murky with smoke, Sam observed meth purchases going down with a ballsy nonchalance. After days of breakneck, pathological hunts, Sam still burned with a flickering neon rage, and he knew it was the only thing keeping him on his feet. He collected the evidence he needed in digital photos and ducked out the back door. It was better to deliver the evidence to the police. Even half-crazy, Sam knew when he was out-numbered.

The air was cold and yellowed from the sodium parking lights, but studded from the glare off the chrome of thirty motorcycles. He heard the footsteps behind him and sighed theatrically. "You really don't want to mess with me, dude." He warned, shoulders slumped, but hands stealthily sliding for his knife.

"Hey, you're playin' paparazzi in my bar, cat." a sinister voice crooned behind him. "Bad idea."

Sam could tell immediately that he had at least seven inches on him, and he was never below using his size as a means of intimidation or a weapon. A lethal glare over his shoulder provided a face to match the eerily smooth voice. He was leather-glad with a goatee that was more white than brown, and was one of the main dealers. Sam knew his pockets were stuffed with meth and lined with cash. The little guy struck out with a mighty kick to Sam's groin that he narrowly and thankfully dodged. The taller man merely attacked. He threw a barrage of punches, feeling them connect and probably break bone. An uppercut finished him off. He didn't even have time to regain his breath before he was nearly blindsided by a kick to the ribs. He dropped his arm tight to his side, managing to protect his ribs and diffuse the force behind it, but it still knocked him backwards, pain momentarily distracting him as he fought to refill his diaphragm. Throwing his swimming eyes, he saw the blurred figures of at least five more men. Their rage and intent, however, was pristine.

Sam was engaged in the fight before he had time to be scared. Adrenaline and experience gave him a brief upper-hand. He'd sidelined another man with an efficient, nasty punch to the throat and a gouge to the eyes. He downed another with a kick to the kneecap and then the crotch. But Sam was soon overwhelmed by the violence of too many attackers and too many blows. A bat to the back of his knee nearly dropped him, and only orneriness kept his knees locked, his shoulders upright.

Time inexplicably slowed down, and that filled Sam with a knowing foreboding. With garbled hearing, studded muffled profanity and the din of violence, Sam the heard the twinkle of breaking glass followed by the vivid image of liquor bottle glinting in the streetlamps. He didn't realize the edges were jagged until they were plunged into his belly. The pain wasn't immediate, but the pressure in his side was. A wicked twist of the bottle ground glass into his organs and carved a scream from his lips. He sloppily shoved the thug away with his right hand and staggered back, disturbed by the blood trickling like wine out of the mouth of the bottle embedded within him. Weakness followed, so thick and pervasive from the injuries and the back-to-back hunts that he couldn't fight back anymore, and a selfish part of him didn't want to. He collapsed, crumbling to all fours. His entire left side felt numb and limp and heavy. There was a delicate ringing in his ears and the erratic beat of his heart in his chest. A kick to the face felt like a being bitchslapped by a lightning bolt. His head snapped up, agony waltzing down his spine before he collided with the pavement, choking on the blood that oozed in his mouth and slicked the back of his throat.

Sam heard their laughter of smoke-scorched voices as hands roughly patted him down, and wondered why it sounded like the growl of hellhounds. The gnashing of teeth and the stink of evil were the last things Dean and Jo and Ellen had heard. The all-encompassing need for redemption, justice at any cost, morphed into a very human compulsion to survive. He curled his fingers around the handle of his father's knife he'd never grabbed before and lashed out at the feet surrounding him. For Winchesters, there was no such thing as fighting dirty, Sam didn't even wince when he sliced an Achilles tendon, and heard the screams intensify around him. He rolled back, inching underneath a truck and out the other side. Powered by nothing but shrill will, Sam stammered somehow managed to stand and he scrambled away in escape.