Dean's heart stops when Sam collapses. He doesn't really have time to process anything about Cas before he's next to Sam and dragging him out of the lab and into the nearest car so he can look at Sam, really look at him to see if he's hurt.

By the time they're outside, Sam's clutching onto Dean like he'll never let go and Dean might just be okay with that if Sam wasn't bleeding out of his hand all over Dean's jacket.

"It's okay, Sammy," he promises, but he doesn't believe it this time. Dean doesn't even know if Sam can hear him. He pries the fingers of Sam's injured hand off of his jacket and holds it out in front of him.

Sam's squinting at his hand too, like he can't remember cutting it open, or can't figure out where all the blood is coming from. If he's being honest with himself, he can't figure out much of anything right now, not even why it feels like his head is ready to explode.

But he can figure out Dean, and Dean is staring at his hand like it's the biggest problem they've got right now, and that's good enough for Sam, so he looks at his hand too, forces his mouth to move around the words in his head, or at least the words he thinks are in his head, but he can't really hear because there's a ringing kind of noise in his ears that's making it hard to be sure of anything.

"It's bad, huh?" he says, or thinks he says, but it comes out as a grunt that makes Dean look up and shake his head.

"No, it's not too bad," Dean promises. "There's a little glass in there, but we can patch you up." He tries to smile supportively at Sam, but he feels more like passing out than anything else. At least, he thinks, that's the one thing I am sure of; we can definitely take care of the cut on Sam's hand. It might not even scar too bad.

Once Dean promises him that the only physical pain Sam is one hundred percent positive he can feel is only a scratch and not life threatening , Sam lets the feeling of exhaustion that's been threatening to take him over since he woke up in the panic room wash over him and his head slumps forward. Dean's voice goes up about an octave, and Sam knows that Dean is telling him to stay awake, but he can't imagine what for. He's still trying to figure it out when he's aware of a stinging in his hand, but he doesn't look up to see what's happening. Sam just lets his head fall even farther forward, and it lands on something solid. Solid and soft and warm and it takes some of the pressure in his head away, and that distant image of something burning dulls too, so Sam decides he's never going to move his head from this spot, right here.

Dean shifts under Sam, who groans in protest, and Dean ignores him until Sam is settled in the front seat of a car that is not Dean's, and Dean is ready to get them back to Bobby's, with Bobby and the Impala in tow.

He turns to Sam and says, "Get some sleep."

Deans starts the car and Sam falls asleep, even though he's still trying to figure out if Dean was really addressing him.

Sam wakes up on a couch with Dean hovering over him. Wherever he's at is familiar to him, looks, feels, smells familiar, but he's having a hard time remembering anything familiar but Dean. He can't even remember what happened or why his head hurts, but Dean is smiling, so everything must be okay. Sam reaches out an arm to grab onto Dean, and as he does so a stabbing image of the only other thing he can remember besides his brother flashes before his eyes and he clutches onto the closest thing to him, Dean's arm.

"You're awake," Dean sighs, relief flooding his voice. He sits down in front of Sam, slowly so as not to disturb Sam's desperate grip, and he takes hold of Sam's other hand, unwraps the blood-soaked gauze and inspects it carefully. Dean cleaned thoroughly, but Sam put up so much of a fight while he was unconscious, Dean put off the stitches as long as he could. Sam's inspecting the wound again too, but he can't really focus on it. He seems more out of it than earlier and he's still clutching onto Dean's arm like his life depends on it. Dean tries not to think about how it might. "You need stitches, Sammy, okay?" Dean says.

Sam nods even though the only thing he heard clearly over all the fire in the room was his name, but he nods anyway because he knows, or thinks he knows, that Dean's not going to hurt him.

Dean takes a deep breath, keeps Sam's left hand on his lap and his right hand on his arm, and turns around to reach for the first aid kit. He pulls out a needle and Sam stares at it suspiciously. It's just a little needle, he says to himself. It can't hurt you. Besides, he thinks, Dean's got it.

"This is going to hurt a little, okay?"Dean warns, watching Sam watch the needle. "Hey, look at me," he growls seriously, and Sam does. It's the first sign that Sam's shown real comprehension of a full sentence since he collapsed at the lab, and that's a good thing, as far as Dean is concerned. "I'm going to give you stitches. You're not going to like it, but you're going to feel better after it's done." Dean doesn't tack on the "I promise" at the end like he wants to because he can't promise Sam something like that ever again, but Sam's looking at him with big, trusting eyes, so Dean feels like he might as well have. "Just don't think about it," Dean suggests.

Sam can't really think about anything, but part of him realizes that if he says it like that then Dean will worry, so he laughs weakly. "No problem," he says. Or tries to say. His lips feel swollen and his tongue feels heavy.

Dean tries a smile too, but even to Sam, who is seeing everything thorough a thick blanket of smoke can tell it's weaker than Sam's laugh. He closes his eyes when Dean sticks the needle into his hand and doesn't open them, even though there's a man smirking at him behind his eyelid who is stringing him up on a meat-hook. Sam can't think who the man is, but there's a name on the tip of his tongues that he's afraid to say. If he says it, then he'll remember, and voice that sounds a lot like Dean's is telling him that remembering is bad.

Instead, Sam thinks about Dean's eyes, green and sincere, and a million half-remembered memories of memories of those eyes, and how they look when they're scared. Sam supposes that's how they look right now. Sam's scared stiff and he can't remember why, so it must be something important for Dean to be terrified too. Instead, Sam focuses on Dean's rough hand cradling Sam's as he works delicately to patch Sam up. Instead, Sam tries not to feel anything but his skin being tugged together. It doesn't hurt, at least not like the pain in his side where an even larger needle is weaving in and out, poking gaping holes in his abdomen.

"Okay, Sammy, I'm all done," Dean says suddenly. Sam opens his eyes and looks at Dean. The pain in his side disappears. Dean is wrapping Sam's hand in a new white strip of gauze, smiling at him shakily. "We're gonna get you upstairs now, alright?" Dean tells Sam, standing up in such a way that Sam could keep his hand around Dean's arm. Sam stands up too, using Dean for support. He wouldn't be able to do it without his brother.

They get to the bottom of the stairs before Sam stops. He squints up into the dark hallway. He thinks he heard something moving up there and he freezes to listen, just to be sure.

"What's wrong, Sammy?" Dean asks. He's squinting up the stairs too, but he doesn't know what he's looking for.

A word pops into Sam's mind. One syllable and even though he can't figure out what it means, he knows that Dean will understand. "Hell," he whispers, and just like the name of the man with the meat-hooks behind Sam's eyes, saying the name opens the floodgate, and suddenly, he remembers, and remembering is bad. Knowing where the fire in the house is coming from doesn't make it easier to put out. "I'm –I'm in Hell," Sam gasps.

Dean gasps too, and Sam collapses. He catches him, but only so that Sam doesn't crack his head open on the stairs. The lay in a huddle of long limbs and unknowable nightmares on the bottom step. Dean twists his arms around Sam's middle, whispering dutifully to his brother. "No, you're not. You're not in Hell. You're out, Sammy. I promise. You're not in Hell. Not anymore."

They sit on the bottom the steps for an hour, but it feels like months. Months for Sam watching Hell flash before his eyes, and months for Dean trying to summon the willpower to drag them both upstairs instead of spending the rest of eternity of the steps. Sam turns in towards Dean, burying his face in his brothers jacket, and Dean prays that one day he'll be able to laugh about this, but he knows he won't.

There's a voice calling his name, and it sounds concerned, but not frightened, so it's not his brother's voice. He fights through a cloud of Hell to get to it and finally, Dean opens his eyes to see Bobby standing over him and Sam. There are bags of groceries on the floor beside Bobby, and Dean thinks he can see his car through the window.

"You boys okay?" asks Bobby.

Dean grunts and nods. Sam is still sleeping against Dean's chest. He's got a fist full of Dean's shirt twisted in one hand and a clump of his own hair in the other. "Help me get him upstairs," Dean says to Bobby.

Bobby pulls an unconscious Sam off of Dean, and Dean is forced to follow because Sam just tightens his grip on Dean's jacket. Once Dean is standing upright and solid, he takes most of his brother's weight and sighs. "Sammy," he says softly. "Can you wake up? You're too big for me to carry up the stairs." Sam's eyelids flutter and his mouth opens a little to let out a tiny groan. "That's it, Sammy," says Dean encouragingly, but there's no hiding the edge of panic in his voice. "That's it. Just for a second. Wake up, just so we can get you upstairs and in bed."

Sam's knees buckles a little, but Dean and Bobby catch him underneath his arms and hoist him up. Sam shudders away from Bobby's touch, but they get him upstairs in less than fifteen minutes with Dean keeping up a litany of praise towards his brother, at least to keep Sam's mind off of Hell. Sam doesn't say anything. He doesn't give any indication that he can understand Dean at all.

Once they're upstairs, Dean takes all of Sam's weight and leads him into a spare bedroom, the one they use when Sam's not in the panic room or they're too tired to go upstairs and just crash on the couch. The beds are too small for both of them, especially for Sam, but it's better than the couch and cleaner than a motel. Dean drops Sam as gently as he can manage onto the bed and Sam collapses. Dean works diligently, pulling off Sam's boots, and wiping the blood off of his face. He works Sam's shirt off and somehow changes his brother out of his jeans. He won't mention it to Sam when he wakes up. It will be like none of this ever happened once Sammy wakes up. If he wakes up.

When Sam's out of his dirty, bloodstained, sweat-soaked clothes, Dean looks his brother over. Sam hasn't moved a muscle and Dean hopes he isn't remembering Hell. He looks so peaceful; it's so easy for Dean to pretend that Sam's just sleeping or that Sam can't remember Hell, even if it means the worst for Sam's body, but Dean knows even that's not true. Dean knows that Sam is in agony, that he's reliving every moment of torture he suffered to save a world that never did anything but hurt him. It's palpable to Dean, and he feels like he could throw up.

Dean leaves Sam's side, and he leaves Sam on top of the blankets because Dean knows better than anyone that Hell is hot. He knows that he won't be sleeping under blankets tonight. The blankets are worse than heat. They're restrictive and suffocating, and Dean knows more about Hell, more about torture than any other living person on the planet, except for maybe his unconscious little brother, so there won't be any blankets tonight.

Bobby is waiting for Dean outside the room. Dean stares blankly at Bobby for few seconds before he says so quietly so no one can hear, "I'm so scared."

But the only thing quieter than Dean's voice is the house, so even Sam, bruised and beaten, and trapped in his own mind, hears him.