Warnings: Little heavier on the angst, a little heavier on the cussing, and a brief description of torture.

Part 2

"I said brother you know, you know
It's a long road we've been walkin' on."
Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky

Sam sleeps for 22 hours without so much as twitching. Dean sleeps for thirteen of those hours and then parks himself in front of the laptop, looking up all the information he can on Emmanuel Allen. There isn't much to find. There's a brief news article in the local paper about a woman finding a man with amnesia in the river, asking for people to come forward if they have information. A few blogs mention the work of a magic healer but it all comes across as bullshit. Only someone like Dean would know any different.

When he can't handle any more of that, Dean grabs his flask, walks out of the motel room, and sits on the curb. He spends the next half hour draining the flask, praying for Sam to be ok, wishing for Bobby to be alive, and mourning Cas for the second time.

It's approaching hour sixteen and Sam's still knocked out cold. Dean checks his pulse, re-bandages his fingers and smears Neosporin on them, and then cards a hand through Sam's tangled hair. The strands are greasy but Dean can't find it in himself to care.

He orders pizza an hour later. The delivery man cocks an eyebrow at the pound of salt on the floor but Dean just shoves a twenty at him and closes the door.

At some point he showers. Sam still sleeps.

Hour twenty. Dean re-checks Sam's pulse and gently bends his limbs a bit, just so he doesn't end up mummified or something.

Twenty minutes later he considers waking Sam up (but he's not worried or freaking out. He's not.) But he doesn't because Sam needs this, and if Dean wakes him up before he's ready and Sam can't go back to sleep, that'll be on him, and that is just the last thing Dean needs.

Sam finally wakes up an hour and a half later. Dean's on the other bed, turned so that he's facing Sam. He figured he might as well try to get some more shut eye while Sam was still out for the count but he couldn't sleep, not without knowing if Sam was really ok or not. When Sam opens his eyes he does it slowly, like he's waking from a drugged haze. He blinks heavily a few times before he catches Dean staring from the bed next to him.

"Hey," Sam croaks, voice catching from over a day of disuse and dehydration.

Relief and fondness fill Dean's chest like a flood, "Hey, Sammy."

The next day they're on the road, heading anywhere that isn't the Midwest. The car – a newly stolen Chevy Chevette – is silent aside from the quiet shifting of their jeans against the worn leather seats. Sam's still groggy and sore from being electrocuted. Dean's getting tenser by the mile, angry at his inability to out-run the knowledge that they left a helpless, insane Castiel with Meg.

"Think he's gonna be ok?" Sam's speech is slurred a bit. His head is resting against the window but his eyes are focused on the windshield.

Dean's jaw ticks, "I don't know."

"Do you want him to be?"

"I don't know."

Sam falls quiet. Dean's hands tighten on the steering wheel and he ignores the way they want to reach for his flask instead. He doesn't want Sam to talk any more. He doesn't want to think about Cas or where he's at, or what he's done, or what he sacrificed. He just wants to fucking breathe for a minute. So, of course, that's when Sam decides to open his mouth again.

"He saved my life, Dean," he says in a statement that's soft and indisputable, as if the fact that Cas is holding all of the crazy now erases all the shit he broke, like Sam's wall.

Dean's jaw and hands tighten so hard he thinks something cracks, but he has to hold onto something if he wants to keep himself from doing something stupid, like punching Sam across the face.

"Shut up, Sam. Just…just stop talking."

For once in his life, Sam does as he's told. Dean suspects it's just because he's too exhausted to argue.

A few hundred miles later they pull over to eat. They're half leaning, half sitting on the hood of the stolen Chevette. The fast food bag is between them, Sam's slowly chewing his burger, looking a little lost, and Dean can't really be bothered to unwrap his.

"Sam?"

Sam turns his head. The cuts from the crash are still there, scabbed and red, but healing. The darkness hasn't quite disappeared from under Sam's eyes despite all the sleep he's gotten, and suddenly Dean just hates the whole fucking world for doing this to his little brother.

"What?" Sam asks when Dean doesn't say anything.

"Nothing. Eat your food."

He can feel Sam side-eye him but Dean ignores it, and forces himself to start eating his burger, despite the nausea.

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

It's a different motel, in a different state, and Indiana's no more than four days behind them. They're on their respective beds with beer on the table and an old black and white film on tv.

"What?"

"The night you got hit by the car. Why didn't you wake me up?"

Sam's silent for a minute before he says, "I didn't think you were there. I mean…I knew you were there, but Lucifer…he used to change the room, sometimes. So it'd look like the cage. And at that point reality was as good as gone, so," Sam shrugs, "Honestly I'm surprised the racket didn't wake you up. Think I ran into just about everything in the damn room."

That's when Dean remembers that he spent that night getting wasted because Dick Roman was still out there, and Bobby was still dead, and Sam was still crazy, and Dean just couldn't fucking handle it anymore. So while Sam was out getting hit by cars and getting downers off the street, Dean was floating in a whiskey oblivion.

Dean has to lock himself in the bathroom and breathe just to keep from vomiting.

Sam's cuts are nothing but red lines and his eyes are clear when he brings Castiel up again. They're in the laundromat, of all places, and it's midnight so the place is empty. Dean watches the washer tumble the clothes in the soapy water while Sam works on the New York Times crossword. Finally, Sam throws down his pen, snapping Dean out of his trance.

"Finally find a clue you can't out-smart, brainiac?" Dean asks with a small smirk.

"We're not gonna leave him."

Dean's expression closes off immediately, "Sam…"

"I know he made mistakes, like huge, end-of-the-world mistakes. But he's our friend and he saved my life. He's sitting in a mental hospital with my hundred years of hell in his head, with Meg as his guardian. We're not leaving him."

Dean can't find it in himself to argue. He doesn't even want to. He hasn't forgiven Cas for all he's done, but he does feel obligated to at least make sure Meg isn't offering him up on a silver platter to a demon lord or something.

Dean pulls out his cell phone and thumbs through his call history until he finds the hospital.

"Yeah, hi, I'm lookin' for information on a patient. Uh, My cousin, we brought in about a week ago…"

And maybe Dean just misses Cas and if the world doesn't end, he wants to be able to eventually forgive the stupid bastard.

It's two weeks to the day since Sam left the hospital when he has his first nightmare of hell. It wasn't like this before. Before it was hallucinations of things that were in hell, or things that Lucifer thought were funny, or of just Lucifer himself, acting more like an annoying sibling than Satan. This is something else. These are things like flashes of torn muscles and burning skin, and forked tongues and claws dancing across his chest. It's of wired cat tails flailing his back and jagged nails being driven into bones and tendons. This is a memory of his first years in hell, where Lucifer was at his angriest and took it all out on Sam's flesh.

When Sam wakes up he's curled on his side, screaming into his sweat-drenched pillow case. Dean's next to him, frantically gripping his arms. Sam can't hear what he's saying over the pounding of his own heart and the fading sound of the whip snapping.

Dean's weight lifts off the bed and Sam hears the sink turn on in the bathroom. He feels his brother sit down next to him again, and it's followed by a hand on his arm and a cold, wet cloth over his forehead and eyes. Almost immediately hell starts to recede. His sweat no longer feels like slick blood, the room's more cold than it is hot, and the phantom pain in his back dulls to a memory. Dean's hand is still on his forehead, gently pressing against the cool cloth. Sam reaches up and grasps Dean's wrist tight enough to hurt and starts to cry, silent shaking sobs that are hidden by darkness and soaked up by the washcloth.

Dean's free hand slides from the cloth into Sam's hair, "I know, Sammy. I know. It's gonna be ok," he murmurs.

After that, Sam gets in the shower and turns the water so it's as cold as he can stand it. The room was still too hot and he could still feel hell clinging to his pores. He feels ridiculous. Hell's been rattling in his head for the better part of a year, he's been seeing Lucifer on a daily basis, and yet this one nightmare completely unglued him. It's like, now that he's not trying to stay sane he actually has time to remember what happened in the cage. And honestly, Sam doesn't know which is worse: the things his mind made up or the things that actually happened.

When he gets out, he climbs into Dean's bed, unable or unwilling to be alone, even if "alone" was just his bed a few feet away.

Dean just scoots over and doesn't say anything.

"So, what now?"

They're on the road again, leaving the motel and hell nightmares behind, driving nowhere in particular.

Dean shrugs, "Pick up some booze, maybe have a little steak. Find a job. Try to save the world."

Sam smirks with amusement, and it's deep enough that his left dimple shows, "Get Dick?"

Dean tosses a glare his way but it's obvious he's trying not to smile too. "Smartass."

Then he knocks the back of Sam's head, and for the first time in forever, things feel like they might be ok.