A/N: You know the drill. Sorry for the delay, more coming soon, thanks for reading, please review. Oh, and Happy New Year!

Spoilers: A vague one for Mystery Spot and possibly others up to and including season 3.

Sam's eyes opened to the sight of peeling paint on the badly kept motel room ceiling. He could feel Dean's pressure on the bed next to him, could feel Dean's breath caressing his shoulder in a decidedly unfriendly way, could feel Dean's gaze locked onto the side of his face. Sam knew he had to face his brother eventually. But he was afraid of what he'd see.

"Sam?" Dean said.

"I'm asleep," Sam answered.

"You're eyes are open."

"No, they're not," Sam lied.

"And you're talking to me."

"I'm dreaming."

"Sam."

"I just wanted you to be safe, Dean. Like a baby eating macaroni."

"You're not making sense."

"I can sing you a lullaby if you want. About war. Perfect for little boys."

"Sam."

"You don't love me anymore," Sam said, his voice catching in his throat.

"Look at yourself," Dean answered by way of explanation.

"I'm doing the best I can," Sam defended.

"No, Sam," Dean said firmly. "LOOK AT YOURSELF."

Sam sat up in bed with a start. He'd been dreaming that dream again. The one that came to him every night and left him with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he'd forgotten something vitally important.

His eyes adjusted to the late afternoon light, and his disappointing surroundings became familiar to him once more. He wasn't in the motel room in Sedona, Arizona. He was in an apartment, his apartment, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dean was nowhere to be seen.

He got out of bed and began his familiar routine of showering, shaving, and shoveling some microwaveable garbage down his gullet, then washing it down with three fingers of whisky. Then he put some gel on his hands and ran them through his dark hair, mussing it up just enough that it looked casually sexy. He brushed his teeth and put on some jeans and a just-tight-enough-that-he-might-as-well-be-topless T-shirt, one of many now in his possession, and took off with his bag, beginning the short walk through the dry Nevada heat to the club where he had become a bartender.

Every day was the same. He worked until 4 in the morning, slept until 4 in the afternoon, and started all over again. Sometimes he wondered why he was able to keep going. But every night as he laid himself down to sleep, he was reminded.

Every night, he had a dream about Dean. In Sam's dreams, Dean was never happy, never warm, and never even touched him. But he was there, and that was enough. It was all he could ask for at this point.

And so, with a pre-sundown buzz from the whisky, he whistled an old hymn his brother once taught him as he marched onward to his place of employment, already looking forward to the end of his shift when he could come back home, back to bed, and back to his fleeting visitation with the specter of Dean Winchester.

Dean had left him in Sedona, only days after Sam had taken extreme, and according to Dean, unforgivable, measures to remove the visions and prevent him from understanding how his crossroads deal had been called off. Sam tried not to remember how long it had been, but the stabbing pain in his chest was an unbearable reminder of the last time he had seen his brother.

One year ago today.

"Hey, Guns!" The lispy, nasal voice of the overweight manager of the club reached Sam's ears through the reverberating bass of techno dance music blaring from the oversized amplifiers that hung from the ceiling. Sam nodded in response, passing the bar to drop his bag in the backroom and don the cowboy hat which was the final piece of his bartending uniform. Then he came back to the bar and helped himself to one more shot of whisky.

"Hey, Gerald," he said, just loud enough to be heard.

The middle-aged man sat at a bar stool and smiled flirtatiously at Sam, leaning over his own drink, fingering the rim of his glass effeminately. He stared on as Sam poured another shot for himself.

"Does that make six or seven today?" Gerald asked with a wry smile. "Should I be concerned about you, Guns?"

"I'm not an alcoholic, Gerald," Sam stated.

"Me, neither," Gerald agreed, draining the rest of his drink with his fat pinky delicately extended, his gaudy rings catching reflections from the flashy club lights.

Sam chuckled in spite of himself. Gerald's advances grew tiresome, but he was a nice enough guy. Sam could hardly complain given the fact that Gerald allowed him to work in the club for cash without any legal documentation at all. He downed his shot and lifted the bottle to pour another one.

"Okay, honey, really," Gerald drawled, putting a hand on the bottle. "You're gonna be toasted before the customers are. Everything okay?"

"It's a bad anniversary," Sam confided, lips tight, eyes on the bar.

"The one that got away?" Gerald deduced.

Sam nodded.

"Any boy who could walk away from you ain't worth the damage you're inflicting on your poor old liver, sweetie pie."

"You don't know the whole story."

"So tell me."

Sam's face tensed up.

"Or not," Gerald smiled patiently. "I'm here when you need."

Sam nodded.

Gerald took the bottle out of Sam's hand. "Until then, I'm cutting you off. You've got a job to do."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."

"'Sir,'" Gerald mocked with a shudder. "Do I look like a sir to you?"

"No, sir," Sam teased with a half grin.

"You're on thin ice, Guns," Gerald sang with a wink, drifting away to greet the early evening customers as once again, Sam sank deep into an ocean of his own thoughts.

"Dean, can we please just talk about this?"

"Oh, now you want to talk?"

Dean didn't even bother to look at Sam as he spoke, angrily shoving clothes into his bag.

"I've told you everything I can," Sam pleaded. And it was pretty much the truth.

"My brother," Dean said sadly. "My own brother, the one person on earth I trusted to be honest with me."

"If you would just calm down…"

"Did I misunderstand about there only being one way to transfer the visions, Sam?" Dean asked, finally stopping his frantic circles around the room to stare daggers into Sammy's eyes.

Sam couldn't look at him.

"So unless you and Bobby figured something else out when I was unconscious, then you, my brother, stood by and let Mia—you let Mia rape me…"

Dean trailed off, his face turning purple as the words crossed his lips.

Sam reflexively scoffed under his breath. "Like Dean Winchester has ever said no to a free meal."

Dean smashed the side of his fist against the mirror on the wall, shattering the glass and barely flinching as he wrapped a white T-shirt around his now bleeding hand.

"You wanna run that by me again?" he asked dangerously.

"I didn't mean… Dean, I'm sorry. We didn't know what else to do. The visions were becoming more intense."

"Exactly! I was this close to remembering what happened to me!"

Sam's eyes darted to the floor again.

"Why are you so determined to keep that from me? Don't I have a right to know how I'm still alive?"

"Dean, please," Sam tried again. "Just sit down. Let me look at your hand—"

"She made me see you, you know," Dean's voice cracked. "When she was… I thought I was making love to you."

The guilt on Sam's face was the last straw for Dean.

"You knew," he said shaking his head. "My God, Sam. You're like a total fucking stranger."

"You don't understand," Sam insisted.

"So explain it to me."

Sam bit his lip. "I've told you—"

"Everything you can," Dean finished for him, zipping up his bag and hoisting it over his shoulder. "Well, let me tell you everything I can, then. I quit."

"Dean, don't. Please."

"I'm done, Sammy—" he cut himself off with a hitch in his breath. "Sam. I realize the last months have been shit for you. But your actions… There's just no excuse for what you've done."

Dean stared harshly at his brother, waiting for Sam to disagree, to confess. But as much as Sam clearly wanted to explain, he kept his lips tightly pursed, his eyes focused downward.

"Unbelievable," Dean shook his head, swallowing the lump in his throat with a painful gulp. He turned and headed for the door.

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do to keep you safe," Sam said quietly.

"I believed that, once," Dean muttered, slamming the door behind him.

"Anything at all," Sam whispered darkly to the empty room.

"Yoo-hoo! Meat head!"

Sam jumped slightly, his attention drawn back to the present moment. He had been stuck in his head again, reliving for the millionth time the last searing argument he'd had with his brother before Dean walked out on him.

"You gonna pour my drink or should I jump back there and do it my fucking self?"

"I'd like to see you try," Sam muttered.

"Excuse me?" The man asked with a lisp that starkly contrasted his shaved head, bodybuilder physique, and tattoo sleeves.

"Nothing," Sam answered, grabbing a tall glass and several bottles of liquor, pouring a sloppy Long Island and pushing it toward the man. "On the house."

"That's not what I ordered."

"It is now," Sam disagreed, making eye contact with the man and mentally communicating how easily he could put him in the hospital if he chose to. The man got the message. He took his drink and backed away.

"You got darkness in those eyes, boy," Gerald's voice appeared at Sam's ear, causing Sam to jump again. Gerald gave a mystified smile.

"You really shouldn't sneak up on me," Sam warned.

"I'm starting to figure that out. What makes me think you've got more than just heartbreak under your belt?"

Sam turned back to the bar, wiping it down vigorously with a rag.

"All right then," Gerald said. "I can't make you share if you don't want to. But, Guns?"

"Yeah?" Sam asked.

"Try to stop scaring the customers, 'kay, babe?"

"Sorry," Sam answered sheepishly.

Gerald pecked Sam on the cheek in response and made his way back to the dance floor which was now teeming with half naked gay men drunkenly dancing their lives away.

"Guns?" said a husky voice behind Sam, causing him to whip around and find himself face to face with his brother.

"Dean!"

"Tell me that's not a reference to your biceps. They're not even that big."

"Fuck, Dean, what are you doing here?"

"That's my welcome after a year away?" he asked mirthlessly, staring at Sam's cowboy hat with a sour look on his face.

Sam ripped off the hat and folded his arms tightly, toeing the floor with embarrassment but refusing to break eye contact with his big brother. "What's up?" he asked a little too casually.

"I need to talk to you," Dean said.

"So talk."

"Not here."

"I'm working, Dean."

"I'm your brother, Sam."

"The brother who deserted me, you mean? Disappeared from my life without a trace?"

The muscles in Dean's jawline flexed angrily. "After what you did to me, Sam, I really don't think you're in any position to get pissy."

Sam wanted to argue, but he knew Dean was right. He dropped his hat onto the bar and reached for Dean's shoulder to guide him through the service entrance at the back of the building. Dean instinctively pulled away from his touch.

"There's an alleyway outside," Sam said impatiently. "Let's talk there."

"After you," Dean gestured.

"What, you think I'm gonna pull a fast one on you?"

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Sam didn't know whether to be hurt or furious, so he shut his gaping mouth and stomped out the back door, the small hairs on the back of his neck prickling as out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gerald staring at him with keen interest.

"Nice establishment," Dean croaked. "Do you offer bottle service?"

"You shouldn't be here," Sam whispered once they were safely around the corner from the bar next to a row of Dumpsters. Several hours had passed since the beginning of Sam's shift, and the sun had gone down, but the temperature was about the same.

"I had to talk to you on neutral ground."

"I didn't realize we were on opposing sides."

Dean glared at Sam as if that should have been obvious.

"So I guess we're not reconciling," Sam muttered without surprise.

Dead silence.

"You been hunting?" Sam asked.

"Here and there. You?"

"Nope."

Dean nodded slowly.

"We always talked about giving it up one day," Sam reflected. "I just thought we'd be doing it for each other. So that we could be together."

"It never would have worked," Dean replied. "I would have lost my mind. I'm not myself unless I'm…" He trailed off.

"Killing," Sam finished for him, understanding completely.

"There's a spell," Dean stated briskly, changing the subject. "I've been doing research… Lots of research, and I found a spell."

"What kind of spell?"

"To bring the visions back."

Sam's throat went dry. "That's not possible," he said quietly. "The transference can't be reversed."

"Not by its original means. But I found a spell."

"Must be pretty powerful."

"It is."

"Like… dark powerful."

Dean's expression seemed to say, "What of it?"

"Jesus, Dean, are you trying to get yourself killed? Dark magic? Really?"

"It's my life, Sam."

"What could possibly make you want the visions back that badly?"

"My life, Sam," Dean repeated sternly. "It's my life, and it's my right to know what happened to me. Miakoda has vanished off the face of the earth, and my brother is a fucking traitor, so what else am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to leave it alone!"

"Why? Why, Sam? I don't understand why you can't just tell me!"

"I don't understand why you can't just realize that you're better off not knowing!"

"When has that ever worked? How many times have we learned that lesson the hard way? In our line of work, Sam, what we don't know can hurt us."

"It's not that simple this time," Sam hissed.

"Did you make a deal? Is that it?"

"Dean, no."

"Did I make a deal?"

"Dean…"

"Can you kind of see the practical implications that might have for me? Don't you think I should know if there's a goddamn price on my head?"

"There's not! My God, Dean, just for once in your pigheaded life, would you please trust that I've got your back?"

"Well, gosh, Sam, I'd love to, but the whole 'getting raped by my sister' thing is proving a pretty tough pill to swallow, know what I mean?"

"This again," Sam shook his head, turning his back on Dean and walking towards the bar.

"'This again,'" Dean mocked. "It's a little bigger than not returning a phone call, Sammy."

"We've already had this fight, and it leads nowhere. I'm going back inside."

"Have you spoken to her?"

"Who?"

"Mia. Do you know where she is?"

Sam turned back around with a deep sigh. "No."

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"I don't know, Dean."

Dean half smiled. "Honesty. How refreshing."

"What do you want with her?"

"A strand of hair, a fingernail. Her heart on a plate, maybe."

"Dean!"

"I need her DNA, Sam. I don't want to hurt her. I just need her DNA."

"For the spell."

"The spell calls for a piece of the person who took the visions away from me."

Sam couldn't help but sigh with quiet relief, and he knew Dean could see the release of tension in his shoulders. "Well, I wish I could help you."

"No, you don't."

"Okay, I don't. And I can't. I honestly haven't seen or spoken to Mia since that night last year. Have you tried calling on her?"

"Only a billion times. She won't show. You?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you tried calling?"

Sam's eyes shifted slightly as he shook his head. "'Course not. No reason to."

"Well, I guess I'm screwed, then," Dean said, eyeing his brother intently.

"I guess so."

Sam fought to maintain eye contact as Dean stared with fiery intensity deep into his pupils.

"Well. Bye." Dean turned on his heel and started walking.

Sam kept his mouth shut until he couldn't take it anymore.

"Dean, wait!" Dean kept walking. "So that's it? You're just gonna bail all over again?" Still no response from Dean and despite Sam's better judgment, he cracked under the fear of losing his brother a second time. "Okay, fine! I talked to her!"

Dean halted in his tracks. Sam watched from behind as Dean's arm raised in his signature swipe of hand over mouth, and when he turned around, his expression of steely anger had finally melted into something softer. More troubled.

"I talked to her," Sam stated again. "I know about the spell. She told me."

"I know," Dean replied.

"You what?"

"I spied on you."

"Wha… When?"

"Doesn't matter."

"How?"

"Doesn't matter, Sam."

"Hold on, you knew that I knew about the spell this whole time and didn't say so?"

Dean stared back at Sam, unblinking.

"You were testing me?" Sam asked, his nostrils flaring angrily.

"I wanted to see if you'd tell me of your own free will. I wanted to give you one more chance to be honest."

Sam's arms flew up in the air wildly. "Well, thank you, Dean! I'm so honored by this opportunity you've given me to finally take your side. As if I haven't already lost everything I love in the process of doing just that!"

With his bitter words, Sam stalked off towards the bar.

"Hey, where the hell are you going?"

Sam turned right back around and stormed at Dean, brandishing an angry finger in his face. "You know what, Dean? I'm done. I. Am. Done. If it's really this hard for you to trust me, then maybe it's time for me to stop trying, so I give up. You're on your own now. You want to fuck up the rest of your eternal existence? Be my guest! I have officially done everything that I can."

"If you'd just tell me what's going—" Dean started again.

"I CAN'T!" Sam screamed in Dean's face, flecks of spit flying to the wind. "I can't and I won't, so if you're so determined to get to the bottom of this, you'll have to do your goddamn spell and figure it out yourself. But good luck, 'cause Mia is the only one who knows how to work that kind of magic, and she didn't breathe a word of it to me."

Sam started to walk away again, muttering to himself furiously.

"Well, she told me," Dean stated in an authoritative voice.

Once again, Sam stopped short, turning around slowly. "Liar," he said. "She would never."

"Not willingly, no."

"The fuck does that mean?"

"Let's just say our long lost sister isn't the only one with persuasive abilities."

"You tortured her," Sam whispered, his stomach dropping.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic."

"Oh, my God! You tortured her! You tortured a member of our family!"

"She's not blameless in this, Sam."

"Dean fucking Winchester! So that's your answer? You're so untrusting, so stubborn, so motherfucking ashamed of our relationship that you would spill your own family's blood?"

"This has nothing to do with us, Sam!"

"The fucking fuck it doesn't. Like I couldn't smell it all over you for months before you left. You wear your embarrassment like cheap cologne!"

"I just wanted to get to the truth."

"The truth that I swore you'd be better off not knowing! And you know what else, Dean? In the old days, you know, before we starting boning each other?" Dean winced but didn't answer back. "You would have believed me back then. All we've ever had was each other, Dean, and we always trusted each other no matter what. And when did that start to change?"

"When you started lying to me," Dean inserted.

"No. It changed when you realized you were in love with me. No matter how good we were together, you couldn't get Dad's nagging fucking voice out of your head. Look at yourself! I bet you're hearing his disapproval of you even as we're standing here!"

Dean tried to wipe the guilty look from his features, but he couldn't deny that Sam was right.

"And so now," Sam went on, "you've let your guilt fester for so long that we haven't spoken in a year, you've tortured Miakoda for information, you're trying to unlock a memory that I've only told you a million fucking times to leave alone, and you want to make this my problem?

"It is your problem!"

"Fuck off and die, you fucking coward!"

"My pleasure!" Dean shrieked, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a tiny flask.

"What is that?"

"The spell is done and this potion is the result. You want me gone so bad? Bottom's up."

Dean unscrewed the cap and lifted the flask to his mouth.

"Wait!" Sam shouted. "That potion will bring back the visions?"

"What do you care?" Dean asked. "You've given up on me, remember?"

Sam paused. "And you already got whatever you needed from Mia? Her DNA or whatever?"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Oh, thanks for reminding me. For the record, I was able to figure out the spell on my own, and I used a couple of strands of her hair left behind in the Impala. But when the potion didn't work, I knew she was the only one who could tell me why." He paused, waiting for Sam to bite.

"And?" Sam asked in spite of himself.

"Well, the spell calls for the DNA of the person who took the visions away from me."

"But it didn't work?" Sam asked breathlessly. "So you found the wrong spell."

Dean shook his head with a cruel smile. "Nah. I just got the wrong DNA."

Without another word, he stepped forward so fast that Sam didn't even see the knife until it was slicing painfully down the side of his face. "Ah!"

Dean held his open flask to the wound on Sam's face, allowing the blood to drip into the potion. "You should already know this, Sammy. Mia didn't fuck the visions out of me. You did."

Sam's mouth hung open in a shocked O as he held a shaky hand to his wound.

"Turns out that when Mia turned herself into you, the transformation was complete. Down to the tiniest detail."

"You needed my DNA," Sam choked.

"And now I have it," Dean said gruffly, swirling the flask in his hand. "Not that the Impala wasn't lousy with strands of your hair too. But I thought it would be rude not to at least get your blessing."

"Dean," Sam pleaded. "Please. You're clearly not yourself. Let's talk about this."

"Tried that. Didn't work. Cheers." He lifted the flask to his lips again.

Sam reached out and stayed his brother's hand. "Dean. I know you're pissed, and I know that you feel betrayed. But you have to believe me. The alternative is worse. Far worse."

Dean shook his head as his eyes filled with sorrow like Sam had never witnessed before. "Nothing can be worse than the hell I'm already in, Sammy boy."

Sam's eyes welled up at the sight of his brother in so much pain.

They stood there for a long time, Sam's hand on Dean's arm, their faces so close that they could feel each other's breath. A single tear dropped down Dean's right cheek.

"For what it's worth," Dean began, his face contorted with tormented adoration.

But he couldn't go on.

"Dean… Please come back to me."

Deepest regret twisted Dean's face into a mask of misery, and he punched Sam in the face as hard as he could, sending him to the ground.

Sam raised his head off of the pavement, too shocked to scream as he watched Dean drink a flask full of eternal damnation all in one gulp.

Dean immediately began to shake and shudder. His body convulsed, and his eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible, and he fell flat on his back, drool foaming out of his mouth and running down his cheek.

"Aaaaaaagggggghhhh!" he screamed, choking and gurgling through his own spit.

Every part of his body writhed in turn as every moment of every forgotten memory came back to him one by one.

"Dean…" Sam croaked, shuddering as he heard hounds growling in the distance and coming steadily closer.

But Dean was lost to Sam now. Dean was lost in his own world of physical agony and mental anguish. The visions funneled into his mind like a bowling ball trying to squeeze through the opening of a wine bottle. It was too much, it was too fast, and yet it just kept coming.

Sam's eyes opened to the sight of peeling paint on the badly kept motel room ceiling. He could feel Dean's pressure on the bed next to him, could feel Dean's breath caressing his shoulder in a decidedly unfriendly way, could feel Dean's gaze locked onto the side of his face. Sam knew he had to face his brother eventually. But he was afraid of what he'd see.

Wait, Sam thought groggily. "We've already done this," he said aloud.

"Done what?" Dean asked in a raspy morning voice, throwing a lazy arm over Sam's chest.

"Dean!"

Sam shot up, immediately remembering what had just happened.

"Dean. You're alive!"

"And you're out of your mind," Dean replied, unruffled. "Look at yourself."

"What?" Sam saw the sunlight coming in through the window. He couldn't remember how he got here or where the last hours of his life had gone. He felt like his brain was spinning inside of his skull.

"I said you're crazy," Dean answered, grumpily pulling a pillow over his head.

"No, you didn't. You said… You said 'look at yourself.' Why did you say that to me?"

"Sam," Dean growled from under his pillow. "Sleep."

"No, this isn't right."

"Agreed."

"Shut up."

Sam got out of the bed and paced the room, not knowing what to even look for. "This isn't right," he mumbled again. "I'm not dreaming. I know I'm not dreaming."

"Come back to bed," Dean whined.

"Shut up!" Sam shouted.

He found his way into the bathroom and fumbled with the light switch before the dirty fluorescent tubes above the mirror flickered to life. He glanced at himself in the mirror, then leaned over the sink to splash cold water on his face. And then he froze.

Slowly, Sam straightened his back and looked a second time at his reflection in the glass. What he saw there nearly made his heart stop.

"Not real," he barely whispered, touching the cold mirror with his palm. "I'm not real…"

Staring back at Sam was a mirror image of Sam, perfect and complete in every detail except one. His eyes. The Sam in the mirror stared back at him with totally wrong eyes. Just like when the Trickster had whisked him away into his own private version of hell.

None of this is real, Sam thought, now too afraid to speak the words out loud. And if none of this is real, where is Dean?

"Sammy," Dean called from bed with a suggestive lilt in his tone. "Get back in here. I miss my baby brother."