Whisphers of the Heart

The boys finally had the room to themselves; Jophiel had gone back to Heaven, they pressumed Cas had followed (or maybe he was close by), and Bobby was in another hotel room nearby. For a while, they just didn't seem to know what to do with themselves as the past few hours, days, weeks, months caught up with them and they tried to deal. Sam went through his things, finding no trace of the lawyer he'd been as Jadon Nash or anything to indicate that Jadon had even existed. Dean watched him, and they were quiet for a long time. It didn't seem like they should be, it felt like there should be noise, some kind of talk going on between them but the silence remained.

Sam was going through his laptop and Dean was flipping through the cable when Sam said, "So, when are you going back to Lisa?"

Dean's thumb paused for the breifest of seconds and he stole a glance at Sam before resuming his channel flipping. "I'm not."

"What?" The laptop was forgotten as Sam turned to face Dean, confusion etched on his face. "Dean, I thought that you-"

"Yeah, well, not anymore." Dean kept flipping and heard Sam swallow.

"You shouldn't have given it up," he said quietly. "You could've stayed out for good, been happy with a family."

"I didn't want it like that." Dean finally tossed the remote away and sat up straight in the bed. "I didn't want to go to Lisa period!"

The anger in Dean's voice took Sam aback and it showed. "Dean-"

"You know how hard it was to agree to you saying yes to Lucifer? How hard it was to watch him walk around in your body, with your voice? Or when you jumped into that hole? The last thing on my mind was a 'normal apple pie life', Sam!" Dean stood and began to pace, running a hand over his face. "And you asked me to leave it alone? Made me promise to not even look for a way to get you out? What the hell was that huh? How could you do that to me, Sam?"

"Because I know you Dean." Sam stood, watching his brother as he moved. "I know how you are and how you get."

"You shouldn't have taken away my choice," Dean finally shouted. It was what made him the angriest, when he let himself think about it. Sam had backed him into a corner in that little brother way of his and Dean, left with basically no other options, had gone out the only door he had, Lisa. "You didn't let me decide-"

"Decide what, Dean?" Sam spread his hands out, palms up. "Decide wether to break the cage open again and this time end the world for good or to kill yourself? You would've done one or the other, man and you know it!"

"But I could still choose for myself! I could still pick what I wanted, the whole freakin' world in Hell's handbasket or to be down there with you!"

Sam's anger evaporated into that understanding look that made his eyes go soft and gentle. It was a look that he'd given many witnesses, used to calm them down and get information. Dean didn't always like when that expression turned his way because it usually lead to chick moments for one, and for another it usually meant Sam was going to say something profound and meaningful.

"And which would you have picked? Huh, Dean? You open the cage, world end's, you can't live with yourself because of it, and end up hating yourself. You kill yourself, you end up back in Hell and we might not have even ended up on the same level so you end up going through...that again for pretty much no reason." Sam stepped closer, hands moving presuasivly, trying to get Dean to understand. "I remember how you were after Dad died. You pushed me away alot, yeah, but you needed someone to be there, Dean. You needed someone to help you get up in the morning and get on with it."

"I didn't want to, not then and not after that." And damn but if it didn't feel like his eyes were filling up with tears. "I couldn't stand how everything seemed to move on when it was like I was stuck." Dean had to turn away for a second to get himself under control and he could hear Sam trying to do the same.

Finally, he heard Sam move a little closer, close enough to feel his body heat and Dean closed his eyes. "Dean, I just didn't want you to wander around in a drunken stupor every day, or to do something really stupid. I wanted to make sure you were going to be-"

"I swear Sam, if the word 'okay' comes out of your mouth, I will punch you," Dean growled turning back around. The corners of Sam's mouth twitched up in a humorless quirk of a grin.

"No, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say, make sure you were taken care of."

They stood in silence for a while longer, thinking about things said and unsaid and trying to figure out where they stood with each other.

Sam swallowed and opened his mouth. "So."

"So," Dean replied.

"You left everything here, I've got nothing left from that life as Jadon...what do we do now?"

Dean shrugged. "Sleep would be my first choice."

Sam made that face Dean privately catalouged as his 'bitch face'. "Dean, we need to figure out what we're going to do. Go back to hunting, find jobs-"

"No way am I working a 9 to 5 again," Dean interrupted with a shudder. "Hunting hours are brutal, but at least they make sense to me." He sat on the bed again, hands between his knees and eyes studying Sam. "Let's go to the Grand Canyon."

"What," Sam half laughed out. Dean grinned.

"Yeah, let's do that. The Canyon, Yellowstone, whatever else we can think of. Just...hang out."

Sam gave him a skeptical look. "And no hunting?"

"Well, maybe a salt and burn." Over Dean's dead body...for the time being. "But play tourist like we kept talking about all those times."

He watched as Sam thought about it, turning it over in his gigantor brain to go with his gigantor body, and Dean couldn't help but feel what a miricale it was. Sam was back, really back, and they were together again. He knew what Sam's answer would be when that slow smile appeared.

It wasn't the time before death, deals, Satan, and Hell. It wasn't just Sam and Dean hunting something. Things had happened, words had been said, actions had been taken. Their lives had been screwed over multiple times, by themselves and others, and there was no going back from any of that. There would be memories and nightmares to deal with on both their parts, things that would have to happen, words that would have to be said, action that would have to be taken. Deatails were non-existant at worst, sketchy at best and problems still had to be tackled.

Eventually.

At the moment though, it was just Sam and Dean, Dean and Sam...and that was the best they'd had in a long while.

FIN

Black-Angel-001: and that's it! hope you enjoyed the ride and the end of it as well. i also hope you'll be around for another supernatural adventure, once i get the details ironed out. until then, peace, love, and long life!