This is how Dean imagined it when he got out of Purgatory; fresh air blowing in his face, the rumble and hum of the Impala as it whizzed down winding roads, the smell of gun oil and powder (and maybe a little sweat, too, to be perfectly honest), and the feel of leather against his back. And, if he didn't know any better, he could swear he could hear the car door squeak shut and the keys jingling in the ignition. He could feel the warm leather on his back. But that couldn't be right. Could it?

"Dean?" a familiar voice said.

But that couldn't be right.

It couldn't be.

It was dark, blessedly so, but the way that voice shot through Dean's heart, he knew it was Sam.

"Dean, man, open your eyes. Please."

That did it. Dean could feel his chest heave with each panicked breath and his body shook. His eyes shut tighter against what had to be an illusion. A fever dream or hallucination that happened all too regularly in Purgatory. The dreams haunted Dean even when he was awake and put him in a panic. They always came in the rare peaceful moments of Purgatory – if such a thing truly existed. Exists. No. Dean was sure nothing close to actual peace existed in a land constructed purely to keep monsters locked away. Sam or John or Mary (why did they always pick her to torture him?) would appear from nowhere it would seem and stare. Or sometimes they would talk. Just…talk. There was nothing vile or threatening, just conversation. But when the moment would pass – Sammy was no longer there clamoring on and on about law school, John wasn't there talking about his pick-up or nagging Dean about how well he kept up the Impala or Mary wasn't there smiling sweetly, telling him how she loved him so – Dean would ache and claw at everything and nothing trying to bring them back. He'd come to and see Cas or Benny (or sometimes both) shaking him back to the grim reality of Purgatory's perpetually dark gray skies and bare trees or the rustling of some creature far off into the distance or the crackle of a small fire they'd built to keep him warm.

No, this wasn't real. This was a fever dream. They always were. Benny and Cas would find him soon and raise him out of the hallucination once again like they always did.

He knew this.

It happened all the time.

But his chest wouldn't stop. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Faster and faster.

Please, Cas. He begged in his mind. Stop this.

"Dean!" The person behind the voice had a grip on him now and the car's rumbling beneath them slowed. It was a dream, like always. The hand on his shoulder had to be Cas or Benny, calling him back from the Purgatory-induced insanity he almost drowned in. And Dean opened his eyes and his breath caught in his throat.

"Wha-?" He opened his eyes and saw the voice that struck so deeply in his heart and it was Sam, steering the car off to the side of the road.

And he screamed.

There was no traffic on the roads and the stars hung heavily overhead. Sam swung the car door open and ran to the passenger side. He opened the door as quickly as he'd done his own and turned Dean towards him. His hands gripped tightly over his eyes and fingers grasping his hair shaking.

"No, no, no, no. No!" He panted between labored breaths.

"Dean, please." Sam placed a hand in Dean's shoulder and used another to try and pry his hands from his head without taking a handful of hair out, too. "You're out. It's okay. You're safe."

"No!" Even with his hands down from his face, his eyes were shut tight and he shook against the back of the passenger seat. "This isn't real. They never are."

"What never is, Dean?" Dean's only response was a grunt when Sam reached out to palm his face. He flinched at the touch but Sam didn't pull away. He'd waited for this – for Dean, since he'd disappeared after killing Dick Roman. A year; over a year, actually. 419 days Dean was gone and Sam tried every trick, spell, and plan he could fathom in that time but it worked. It worked! Dean was home (whatever home was for a Winchester) and safe (whatever safe was for a Winchester). He'd gotten through hell and he could get through this. Sam needed him too. Did taking him out of that place mean anything if Dean was still being tortured in his own mind? He sighed and watched as Dean, his big brother, crumpled and faded away right in front of him. Somehow, he'd thought that when Dean was free of whatever new hell had claimed him, he'd come through it all again and be fine. Dean was always fine. Even after hell. But there was solace in the thought that Dean wasn't in Purgatory alone. Cas had saved him in hell and he'd watched over Dean in Purgatory, too. The irony never escaped him that his mother had proclaimed to Dean as a child that angels were watching over him and he always wondered if she ever knew how true a statement that was.

But he couldn't think about that now. Now, Dean was in front of him hyperventilating and unreachable. Cas was nowhere to be found and Dean needed help. Now. Sam did the only thing he could think of and pulled his brother close to him. It must have startled Dean, who stopped his muttered cries of "no, no, no" as Sam wrapped his arms around him and held him there.

The moment was almost silent, filled with only the sounds of crickets off into the waist-high grass a few feet away and the buzzing of insect wings. The dark road seemed to be abandoned that night and the only real light for as far as Sam could see came from the headlights of the Impala. And they sat there, in their chick flick moment with Dean, safe and alive and home, wrapped up into Sam and so still.

Sam pulled away first. Dean's breathing had slowed and his body had relaxed and Sam thought progress was being made. He gently pushed Dean away to find him asleep, mouth slack, and snoring quietly. His brows were tense and drawn down but he had stopped screaming and was sleeping.

"Progress." Sam whispered. He turned his legs back into the car and shut the door quietly. He ran with as much urgency as before to the driver's side and started the car heading off to a motel.

Dean was lighter since Purgatory. The mud-caked and tattered remains of his clothes clung loosely to his body and Sam found it disturbingly easy to be able to haul Dean's arm's across his shoulder, his arm around Dean's waist and carry him into the motel room.

Moonlight streamed into the room and illuminated the bed closest to the window and the door (always Dean's bed) and he laid his brother down. Dean stirred and grunted from the movement but remained firmly asleep while Sam dashed to the trunk of the Impala to grab his duffel and back. The bag clamored on the table across from the bed and Sam walked over to wall and flipped the switch.

Almost like something out of a movie, Dean's eyes flung open wildly and he groaned at first before letting out another scream that Sam hoped he'd never have to hear again. Dean drew his hands over his eyes and coiled on his stomach moaning into the pillow. Sam watched for a moment before realizing his mistake. He jumped to the light switch, flipped it off and released the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"Shit. Shit! Dean, I'm sorry. Your eyes. Fuck!"

Sam stood there, not knowing whether to walk over to the huddled mess of his brother and comfort him back to sleep again or to stay away, fearing his pressing might cause more harm than good. He didn't have a chance to do anything. Dean's body relaxed and he sat up wearily, away from the direction of the moonlight. He rubbed his hands soothingly over his eyes and breathed ragged breaths.

"Why do you keep coming back?" It was a whisper, more to himself than anyone else. "Why do you keep doing this to me?"

"Doing what, Dean?" Sam asked, still unsure of what to do so he closed the curtain to the window and stood tethered to the floor. "Look around. We're in a motel room, the crappy motel room that we always stay in when we're on the roads." He gestured around the dark motel room. Crappy TV, two twin beds with a nightstand between them, a couple of lamps, a table by the door, and a kitchenette. Yup, standard fare. "You're safe... If-if you want, we could, uh, go back to Bobby's or somewhere where you feel safe. We're kinda far from South Dakota, but I can drive there in a day and a half, maybe less – speed limit be damned! Christ, Dean. He's gonna be so happy to see you."

"Bo-Bobby?" Another whisper to no one. But Sam heard and went on.

"Yeah, yeah. He's the one who found the spell and all the crap I needed for it. He would've come with me, but he stayed back in case I needed something from his books. Or if I needed someone in the FBI real quick to justify to some local, hick sheriff why I was doing 100 miles an hour through his town." He chuckled. Dean didn't respond, so he stopped and shifted awkwardly in his spot.

The sheets ruffled beneath Dean and Sam took half a step forward. "Bobby? Alive?" Bobby was never in the fever dreams before. Bobby was dead, or so Dean had thought.

"Shit! Yeah, Dean. Bobby's alive. He's perfectly fine." He lied. Bobby was alive, that much was true, but Bobby never completely recovered from the bullet to the head. Sometimes, he'd have the shakes so badly that he wouldn't move, too afraid to break something. Other times, he'd be so tired that he'd stay in bed with his books within arm's distance piled high working on a way to bring Dean back from where ever the hell Dick Roman zapped him to. When he found out it was Purgatory, Sam had moved Bobby's mattress into his library and he lived out of there for six months. When Dean was sent to Purgatory Bobby was still in a coma – a vegetative state, the doctor's called it. After Dean disappeared, his phone rang and it was some nurse from the hospital on the other line. He fully expected the worst possible news – "I'm sorry, sir. Bobby passed away last night. He never regained consciousness."- or some melodramatic TV-type shit. But no. The nurse had told him that she came in to find Bobby sitting up and yelling for Dean and wouldn't calm down until someone called him. He'd sensed it somehow, and Sam never could shake the feeling that Bobby woke up, that he came back, for Dean.

"Sam?" It was the first time the Dean had spoken without unshielded terror in his voice, but it still wavered.

"Yeah, Dean?" Sam's did, too.

"Is this…" his voice cracked like a thirteen year old's in the throes of puberty. "Is this real? How can this be real?"

Sam couldn't contain himself any longer. He walked to the bed in swift strides and Dean's muscles tensed. Not a flinch, but his fight or flight response kicked into overdrive. He slowly approached the bed from the side and put a hand on Dean's shoulder and Dean finally took his hand from his face. "This is real." Sam spoke slowly, deliberately, so there was no mistaking. "Dean, I swear to you that this is really real. Remember when I kept seeing Lucifer everywhere and thought I was going crazy?" He paused and Dean nodded, staring off straight ahead into the darkness now. "You grabbed my hand and kept telling me that this was real and whatever I was seeing was just in my head. Right?" Another nod. Sam reach to Dean's knee where his hand had fallen and took the hand in his. He waited for Dean's limb to stop shaking before putting that hand over his heart. "Purgatory was real, but so is this. This. Is. Real. Dean, you're home." Sam couldn't fight the smile that spread dumbly across his face. Despite everything, the fact that Cas had fluttered off somewhere after the spell and that some other man was dragged out of Purgatory with Dean and his angel and the Dean sat before him so traumatized, Sam was happy. Dean was safe, the rest they could all deal with as it came.

Minutes passed and they sat like that; Dean's hand rested over Sam's heart still watching nothing. Then, his hand sagged a bit in Sam's and his body swayed. Sam moved carefully and laid Dean back down on the bed, covering him with a blanket.

The rest they could deal with as it came. In the morning, or whenever Dean woke up, Sam would check him over for injuries, get him some clean clothes and a razor. If Dean, pre-Purgatory Dean, could see his wild hair now, he'd try hacking it off with a butter knife. Sam smiled. Then they would head back to Bobby's, find Cas (and that man) and deal with the rest as it came.