Archive of Our Own

***

Precisely thirty-one days after the night Sam left for Stanford, Dean was in a hotel bathroom, staring at a stick. A plastic stick, with a two blue lines in its window. He cursed. Wrapped the stick up in toilet paper and stuck it deep into the bathroom wastebasket. He'd known what the result was going to be, had known in his bones. The test was just confirmation. He'd been vomiting, every one of those thirty one days, often multiple times a day.

He left the bathroom, headed into the motel room proper where his father was staring at his journal again, lost in thought. He looked up as Dean's approach with eyes that betrayed disappointment. Not at the result of the test. He didn't know, wouldn't ever know. No, the disappointment was for their broken family. It had been Dean's job to take care of them, to keep them together. There must have been something Dean could have said that would keep Sam there, something Dean could have done. His father would never say it, but his every look betrayed just those thoughts.

The thing was, Dean could have said just the thing that would have kept Sam here with them. He'd already been certain of the result of the test, if in denial about it, for days by that point. Even now, Dean knew that he could call Sam up, say those two words and Sam would drop everything, come back to them. Come back to him. He wasn't going to say it. Not ever. Sam wouldn't stay for Dean. Dean sure as hell wasn't going to trick him back with that oldest of obligations.

"So, look," Dean said to his father. "I was thinking about heading up on my own to Maine. There's a case up there. Seems simple enough, angry spirit, salt and burn. Thought I'd make a road trip of it. I've got something personal I gotta take care of. We could meet up again in a couple of weeks."

So he left his father for the first time, thirty-one days after Sam did. He just grabbed the duffels he'd left packed up on his bed, loaded them up into his car and left. He wasn't around, so he didn't see his father digging through the bathroom trash, finding the positive test and snapping it in half, not in anger, but regret at the things he could never talk about with his son.

***

Twenty one more days pass and he still hadn't gone and done what he'd set out to do. Not the angry spirit. That had been laid to rest days ago, a dainty lace handkerchief, soaked in blood and treasured, first as a keepsake, then as grim family memento, had tethered the spirit to this world. No, he'd set out to get his own grim family memento cut from his womb, to lay to rest any hopes of something that could have been between him and Sam. He hadn't done it. Couldn't walk into the clinic that he knew was just down the block, couldn't make the call to set an appointment. He knew what he had to do, but for some reason, he couldn't do it. He'd made a decision, but he couldn't put it into action. He had to get rid of this baby. He couldn't get rid of it. It was part of him, part of Sam. All he had of Sam at the moment. That little baby is the sum of us, Dean thought,

His cell phone rang. He looked away from the hotel bathroom mirror where he'd been examining his torso for any hint of a baby bump. There had been one. Just the hint of one, nothing that couldn't be hidden by three layers of shirt and bulky jacket. He picked up the phone, checked the caller id. It was his father. He'd been dodging the man's calls for days now, ignoring his texts. Time he just answered him, for fear that the man would come hunting for him.

"Where are you, Dean?" his father demanded, first thing. No hello. No tenderness. John Winchester had been speaking fear and worry, but all Dean had heard was anger and disappointment.

"New Hampshire," Dean said. "Manchester. Where do you need me to be?"

There was a pause on the phone.

"Have you done what you needed to do?" his father asked, and for a moment, Dean was certain that his father knew about the pregnancy, what Dean's intentions had been when he'd set off on his own.

"Not yet," Dean said, able to elide the truth, hide the truth, avoid the truth with this man, but unable to tell him a bald-faced lie.

"Do you need my help?" his father asked, and they could be talking about the salt and burn that Dean had ostensibly gone off to do on his own, but Dean knew they weren't.

"No, Sir," Dean said. "Some things you have to do on your own."

"One more week. Then we'll meet in Delaware," his father said. "I'll text you co-ordinates."

Four more days passed, and Dean hadn't left the hotel room except for the bottles of ginger ale that were the only thing that could pass his lips without him hurling it back up, mostly, and fifth of whiskey he'd been intending to drink on the grounds that it didn't matter, but couldn't because the merest whiff of it had sent him running for the toilet, his morning sickness having started early and having gotten worse, rather than better. There was no appointment at the clinic, no attempt to even walk in. There would be no chance for it now. He couldn't have the procedure, recover and still drive down to Delaware in time. Dean put it out of his mind. There were still plenty of weeks. Nine, he thought to himself as he loaded up the car, tried not to think about one of those plastic baby shell things fastened into the back seat, which was where he was headed if he didn't get it together soon to get this taken care of. Nine more weeks, in even the least liberal of states.

They met at a motor court hotel outside of Dover. His father looked him up and down, not fooled by the bulky leather coat in the slightest, but still not saying anything. Despite the bump, Dean looked, if anything, thinner, more worn down, than he'd been when he left for Maine. John thought it was because Dean felt like he was being asked to make a decision that he didn't want to make.

John Winchester felt only concern, compounded by an inability to say the tender thing. He yearned to take his oldest son in his arms, place a hand softly and protectively on Dean's belly and tell him that it was okay, that Dean didn't have to rip the child from his body, that John understood and that it was okay. Dean could stand down, he didn't have to be his father's soldier, not now. John couldn't. He didn't. The words froze before they could be spoken. He couldn't close the ten steps between them, much less wrap his pregnant son in his arms. They parted again that night, John to Colorado, Dean to Michigan.

***

The morning sickness grew worse yet and unable to keep even water down, Dean kept working the case his Dad had put him onto, at least as best he could. Some days, he never made it outside of the motel bathroom. Other days, he found it in him to get up, do some research, ask some questions. He could force himself to act like normal. Other days, he couldn't, he was just too weak, too sick.

Two weeks later, Dean collapsed in Cadillac, Michigan, while searching the local historical archives for the grave site of one James Hammerstein. He didn't have an insurance card on him. They pumped him full of IV fluids, gave him a prescription for anti-emetic drugs and sent him on his way. Dean hunkered down in a motel room with the drugs- a suppository, so he couldn't vomit it up and how embarrassing was that. In five days he threw up so many times he lost count, even on the drugs. He was so severely dehydrated that it felt like his skin was on fire. He was hallucinating that he was under some kind of supernatural attack. Mind made up to get out of town, he just about crawled out of his motel room, made it as far as opening the door to the Impala before he collapsed again.

This time, they admitted him. While they rehydrated him, they asked him his pre-pregnancy weight, were shocked to find it twenty-five pounds more than his current weight, that he'd lost nearly fourteen percent of his body weight in less than three months.They ran further tests, discovered he was on the verge of major organ failure, not to mention a host of other problems. Four days later, still in a hospital bed, IV in his arm, not one of their anti-emetic drugs making a damn bit of difference, there was talk of NG tubes, PICC lines and TPN. The hospital itself was making him sicker, he thought. It was a nightmare miasma of smells. The smell of food from other rooms made him sick. The smell of the disinfectants they used made him sick. The body odor of the resident, who'd probably been on call for too long without a shower, made him sick. Most of all, the persistent smell of sick people that permeated the hospital made him sick. It was torture, just being here.

On the fifth day, he finally called. Left a whispered message on his father's phone, "Sir," he'd said. "I'm not going to be able to finish this hunt."

***

Three days after that, John Winchester found Dean in his hospital bed, asleep, tube snaking down his nose, thinner than before, eyes sunken into eye sockets that were as black as if he'd got a black eye. The rest of Dean's skin had a yellowish cast to it that John hoped wasn't jaundice. He sat down to wait for Dean to wake up. The first thing Dean did upon waking was to vomit a thin, watery reddish mixture.

"Go," his son told him. The white of his left eye was a shockingly brilliant red. He'd burst a blood vessel in it obviously. "You smell like burned corpse."

"Son, that was ten states, five days and six showers ago," John Winchester said.

"Go," Dean said, then started gagging again, stomach trying to empty itself of nothing.

John left and after a long search, found Dean's doctor, and after a short discussion, got her to talk to him.

"Are you the father?" he was asked.

"I'm Dean's father," he said. "I don't know who the father of his baby is. He doesn't have anyone in particular, as far as I know."

"It's Hyperemesis Gravidarum," the doctor, an earnest young Indian woman, said. "And it's not responding to any treatment we've tried."

"He's in the hospital because of morning sickness?"

The doctor closed her mouth and eyes for a moment, as if praying to some god or willing herself not to hit him, then said, "Your son is fighting for his life and his baby's life. Hyperemesis Gravidarum is to morning sickness as lightning is to a lightning bug, and Dean's is the most severe case we've seen at this hospital. He was severely dehydrated and suffering from ketoacidosis and hypovolemia when he was brought in. IV fluids have corrected that to some extent, but he's still suffering from malnutrition, anemia, vitamin deficiencies and rhabomyolysis, from his body breaking down muscle. We've had to cauterize two different Mallory-Weiss tears. Honestly, he's not tolerating the NG tube well. Later today, we'll put in a PICC line for TPN, but that brings its own set of complications."

"Mallory-Weiss tears?" John asked.

The doctor was explaining how his son's esophagus near the stomach had outright torn itself open from the force of his vomiting, when a nurse interrupted her, "Doctor, he's bleeding again."

"How long?"

The nurse said, "He hasn't stopped vomiting blood for ten minutes now."

"Call the surgeon. I'm not waiting to see if it stops itself this time. He can't afford to lose more," she said. Then the doctor was gone, hopefully off taking care of his son.

John found a waiting room. Feeling guilty that he'd set off this latest bout with the lingering odor of his last salt and burn, he sat down and waited. His son's esophagus sounded like it was more or less shredding itself. He'd known his son was pregnant for months now, even before he'd found the pregnancy test. The persistent throwing up had given him away, but John hadn't thought anything of it. Mary had suffered pretty badly from morning sickness both times, but it had always eased up by the afternoon, and then had been gone altogether by the time her fourth month of pregnancy had rolled around. He'd thought, or at least it had seemed that way, that Dean had been going to get an abortion when he'd gone off to the east coast, but Dean had returned still pregnant.

He should have seen that Dean was ill, should have said something, done something. It had to have been pretty bad for pretty long and Dean just trying to power through it. John knew rhabomyolysis. Some of his buddies in the Marines had suffered crush syndrome from blast injuries. It was toxicity from muscle tissue breaking down in the bloodstream. Dean's body had always been lean and muscular. Without a lot of fat reserves, his body must have turned to the only other source of calories for metabolism. His body had been eating itself when he couldn't eat anything else.

He'd just lost one son and John Winchester didn't know if he could stand to lose the second.

***

Three weeks later, Dean had yet to get out of his hospital bed. Sitting up made the nausea worse, much less standing. If anything, he'd gotten weaker. Even the TPN had helped only a little. They could keep him hydrated and his electrolytes in balance, but they couldn't stop him from hurling. Not one of their antiemetics could stop him from throwing up anything put into his stomach. They couldn't stop the constant nausea that stopped him from sleeping, from reading or being able to watch television, or even just being in the same room as other people. For the first time that Dean could remember, he wanted to die. Anything was preferable to this state. He thought he probably could have handled the throwing up several times a day thing. It was the constant nausea, that rising of his gullet feeling, that was so debilitating more than anything else. It left him helpless and the thing Dean hated most out of anything was feeling helpless.

The doctor, a cute young doctor, and any other time, Dean would have been trying his smile on her, just to see how far he could get with her, but now he just sort of blearily looked up at her and tried not to think about how much her perfume made him need to barf. Probably wasn't even perfume, just her soap or something, but it made her smell like an old lady. Hyperolfaction, one of the many awesome symptoms of his Hyperemesis Gravidarum, made him sensitive to every smell, but worse than that, made every smell an awful one. Things that he'd loved, like burgers, smelled like death to him. For that matter, nothing his father had done, no amount of showering, changing of clothes, even buying new clothes and shoes, had made his smell sufficiently tolerable enough that Dean could have him in the same room for more than five minutes. He'd wanted his Dad so bad, just to have the man lay a heavy hand on his shoulder and tell him it would be okay, but he just couldn't handle the smell of him. John Winchester, unable to be in the same room as his son, had gone back on the hunt. He called every night to check on Dean. At least he called every night he had cell phone reception. It was more nights than not.

"We've tried almost everything, except one thing," she said. "Yours is the most intractable case of Hyperemesis gravidarum I've ever tried to treat. We need to talk about your last option."

"What's my last option here?" he asked. "There one more drug you can try or something?"

"We terminate the pregnancy," she said.

"Son of a bitch," he swore, and he was silent a long time. The doctor waited patiently for him. "I can't. I thought I had to get an abortion. I tried. I couldn't do it. God, look at me, Doc. I'm a high school dropout with a GED and no fixed address. I'm the last person in the world you'd trust with a baby, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill my baby. I can't do it, not even to save my own life."

"Dean, you can't think of this as saving you or your baby. I don't think we can save your baby. We can save you. Or you can go down with the baby. I don't know if we can keep you on TPN long term. You're already showing signs of acute cholecystitis. You're still jaundiced, you've continued to lose weight, even on the TPN. You've had three surgeries to stop bleeding in your esophagus. Even if we could save your baby, the outcome isn't good. For three crucial months, you pretty much didn't get nutrition. I'm seeing severely restricted fetal growth. Your 17 week old fetus is about the size of a normal thirteen week fetus, maybe a fourteen week one."

She continued on in this vein, talking about developmental delays, fetal abnormalities, she really didn't like the look of his last ultrasound. All Dean heard was that no matter what he did, his baby was as good as dead already.

"So, what?" he asked, bitterly. "You cut him out of me, and I'm all good? Better luck making a baby next time? Maybe I won't puke my guts out next time?"

She looked at him with the softest of pity, then said, "The single biggest risk factor in hyperemesis gravidarum is having had it before. Sometimes it's not as bad the second time out of the gate. Other times, it's worse."

It felt like she was trying to rip the baby out of him right then with some kind of blunt knife. This was it. This was his one chance and it was going to end so soon after it had started. Because it was one thing to stumble into this shit and stay in it if there was a chance of his and Sam's baby at the end of it, but he'd never willingly do this again, knowing the facts. Then, suddenly, some hospital employee was rolling a cart with meal trays on it past his door. It reeked, a foul stench of dead things and rot. He felt that now so familiar upheaval of his guts, the spasm of his abdominal muscles. The nausea rode him like he was a horse. It was like he had no control of his body at all.

There wasn't much to throw up. They didn't allow him hardly anything by mouth, not even water, but he got ice chips and your gut made its own fluids, he'd discovered. Even when you ate nothing, you could still always throw up a little something. A kidney shaped pan was shoved under his mouth before he could spew out the little that had managed to accumulate inside him. When the spasms were done and he'd been allowed to rinse his mouth out, he complained, "Really wish I could brush my teeth."

He hadn't been able to use a toothbrush for months by this point. It set his gag reflex off just having it in his mouth, but then, it seemed like anything and everything set him off these days. The doctor was still looking at him, waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to tell her it was okay to cut his baby out. He felt the burning pain in his upper torso again. Referred pain from his gallbladder he'd been told. But then everything hurt these days, or just ached.

The worst of it all was just how Goddamn hungry he was. You'd think you couldn't be hungry with all the nausea, but he was. When he'd grown up enough to earn his own money, buy his own food, he'd sworn that he'd never, ever again go hungry. He'd given his food to Sam so many times, so that Sam wouldn't be hungry. But here he was, starving again, worse than ever before. He'd do almost anything, he thought, just to be able to eat a damn burger.

He laid back in bed, feeling weak and dazed. "I'll think about it," he said.

He drifted to sleep, because that was about all he did these days, when he wasn't puking or being poked and prodded for medical reasons and woke some hours later to his phone ringing. It was dark out. He'd slept all day through to the evening hours again. He picked the phone up automatically, not looking at the caller id, assuming it'd be Dad.

"Dean?" said the voice on the other end of the line. It wasn't Dad. The voice was light, excited sounding. Happy. It was Sam, calling all these months later finally. There was chattering noise around him, like the boy was at a party or something.

"Hey, Sam," Dean said, careful to use his best on voice, the one that could hide almost anything. The one that sounded like it was just yesterday that he'd last talked to Sam, not months and not after a round of recriminations that Dean regretted and he was pretty sure Sam did as well. "What's going on? You at a party?"

"Yeah," Sam said, sounding pretty pleased with himself, pretty damn happy. "Just a kegger, but I couldn't help thinking you'd love it. I miss you."

"I miss you too, Sammy," Dean said.

"I thought maybe you could road trip out to see me," Sam said. "It's parents weekend next weekend. I know Dad won't come, but maybe you could get away, if you're close enough."

For a brief second, Dean thought about telling Sam just why he wouldn't be coming to visit next weekend. Sam sounded so damn eager, so damn young. Just a boy, really. Dean felt so old, so tired, about a million years old. He felt like he had an anvil weighing down his heart. He had to deal with this thing, this choice he had to make. Sam didn't. Sam could be the carefree kid that he sounded like on the phone. Dean thought about their one amazing month together, how he and his brother would lie together in the heat of the summer nights and drift together. He thought about how Sam would move in him, urgently, insistently, and how their first time together the both of them had cried, Dean because he knew he was placing a burden he never should have on his brother, and yet he couldn't not ask for that from Sam, once it had been offered. He thought about how they'd been so careful about condoms except for that one time. Dean didn't, wouldn't ever tell him what was happening. Dean could carry this burden on his own, just like he had so far. He couldn't lie to his father, but to his brother, when it meant saving him from pain, Dean could lie his head off.

"Sorry, Sam," Dean said. "I can't come. I've got this thing going on."

Just then, the nurse came in with part of his evening meds. A lot of them went right into the IV, but there was one that was a suppository, a new kind of anti-nausea med they were trying on him. It was shift change for them, so she was going to want to take his vitals, ask him questions about how he was doing. The nurse was Janie, nice enough woman so long as you were compliant. Janie didn't like non-compliant patients. Dean actually liked Janie better than the other nurses, because she didn't soft pedal anything. She didn't pity him either. She was all business. And as far as the smells went, Janie was the least offensive smelling around, neither too perfumey, nor body odorish.

"Look, I gotta go," Dean said. "I'll call back."

"When you have a moment," Janie said, impatiently from the doorway.

Sam, for his part, was always more observant, more sharp than he had any right to be. He must have been listening to the background sounds in addition to what his brother had been saying as well as not saying.

"Dean, what's going on? Are you in the hospital? Don't lie, I can hear the nurse," Sam said.

"I just got laid up for a day or two," Dean said. "No big thing. Be out in a snap. Some kind of stomach thing, got dehydrated."

Dean could hear Sam's hesitation on the other end of the line, like he was gearing up to state his disbelief, so before he could say anything, Dean said, "Look, gotta go. Got a sexy nurse waiting on me."

Then he hung up.

"Sorry about that," Dean said. "It was just my brother."

"Why'd you lie to him?" she asked as she began looking him over, or rather, his equipment. She started with the IV machine and bag.

"About you being a sexy nurse?" he asked, then turned his best smile on, probably a lot less effective these days, him being a bag of yellow skin and bones. "Everyone knows you're the sexiest nurse on the floor, Janie."

Of course, that wasn't saying much. Nurses in this hospital were built more along Nurse Ratched lines rather than the lines of the ones you'd see on Casa Erotica. Also, actual nurses tended to wear scrubs rather than those dresses. Scrubs looked sexy on no one ever.

"Dean, honey, you've been the hospital over three weeks now, hardly any visitors. Maybe you should have told your brother."

"And have him rush out from California, so he can sit in the waiting room? He's just gonna make me puke."

"Maybe he won't," she said. "Not everyone does."

"He will. He's not coming, because I don't want him here," Dean said. Sam was never going to know. This was Dean's burden to carry, alone. Sam had no part of it. Gave up his part when he left.

"Shall we get this over with?" Janie asked, holding up the package of the various meds he took. Dean was so weak that he actually needed her help to roll over onto his side.

***

John Winchester was in Northwest Indiana when he got the call. He'd been hunting down a Woman in White that was rumored to haunt the dunes on the lakeshore of Lake Michigan, who'd supposedly drowned three men. She was known as Diana of the Dunes. The hunts he'd been keeping to lately were pretty weak tea, but he wanted to stay close, in case he was needed, in case Dean would call and ask him to come back. It was Dean. John cursed. He'd lost track of the time, meant to be off this beach well before ten and back to the room, to call his son, but it was two in the morning.

Dean wouldn't have called, would have assumed that John was out of signal range. Unless it was something important. John was tempted not to pick it up, to just let it go to voice mail, so Dean would assume he wasn't available, but he thought about his son, alone in his bed, unable to tolerate the smell of people, for weeks now. He squared his shoulders and ignored the feelings of guilt, that he should have been there, should be closer. Should be sitting in the waiting room, instead of a state away, searching for some spirit, who by all accounts, only drowned men who beat their wives. Yeah, he'd have to take her out eventually, but it could wait. If she took out another waste of oxygen in the meantime, John thought he could live with that.

"Dean?"

He didn't ask if everything was all right. Clearly, it wasn't.

"Dad?"

Dean's voice was hopeful, still believing, after all these years and so much evidence to the contrary, that his old man was a hero and that he could always fix things, always make them right. But there was nothing here that John could fix. Dean's illness, despite its severity, wasn't supernatural in origin. John had gone over every inch of Dean's every possession, searching for hex bags, juju, cursed objects and he'd found nothing. It was just bad luck, possibly influenced by genetics, according to the doctor- a predisposition to not tolerate pregnancy hormones well was the most likely cause, exacerbated by the fact that Dean just hadn't any extra weight to lose at the start of his pregnancy and that he didn't get effective treatment until he was in critical condition.

"Have things gotten worse?" John asked. They still hadn't, not after all this time, acknowledged this pregnancy to each other. They didn't speak about it in direct terms.

"This thing's kicking my ass," Dean said, his voice was a defeated whisper. "The doctor, she thinks the only way I'm going to get better is if I terminate, but I can't do it. Not even if it saves my life."

"Damn it, Dean. You always put on your own life vest first," John snapped, then immediately regretted his tone. But not what he said. He lowered his voice, softened himself as much as he could, and said, "You have to save your own life first, because you aren't going to be able to save anyone else if you're drowning yourself. This is the time where you need to put yourself first."

"This might be my only chance to have a baby," Dean said. "She says it's pretty likely I'd get it if I were to try again. Maybe I could power through this, but I couldn't do this, knowing I was heading into this. I wasn't planning on this, but always thought, you know, eventually I'd have some kids. This means no kids."

"You're a carrier. You're doubly blessed," John said. "Maybe you won't be able to carry any children, but you can still father children some day. Someday, when this is done, you can find a woman or another carrier and settle down. Have kids with him or her."

John didn't think that the parent who carried the children loved them any more, but John hoped not, if only because he loved his sons so much it frightened him at time. The thought of Mary loving his boys more than he did was truly terrifying. He loved his sons beyond his capacity to express it. He loved them so much that there were times he couldn't breathe for the thought that they would be in danger. People said, and he let them think, that he did what he did out of revenge for Mary, but it wasn't true. Everything he did was to keep his boys safe the only way he knew how. He loved them so much that his insides tangled up, his thoughts froze and he was unable to act. He thought about Dean, for whom the only thing that really mattered was his family, alone in a hospital room with the hardest decision he'd faced in his short life.

"I'll be there in three and a half hours, Deano," John said, thinking he could swing by the Blackhawk Motel where he was saying and be packed and on the road in half an hour. In the early morning, traffic would be light. He could fly up the highways and be in Cadillac in three hours. "Even if I have to sit with my phone in the waiting room, I'll be there."

***

When Dean woke, it was full light and his father was sleeping in the chair beside his bed. He still smelled of toasted corpse, but it was overlaid with something that smelled kind of swampy and damp. Dean's gagging woke him and he snapped into immediate action, shoving something under his mouth for Dean to vomit into.

"I'll go and get a nurse for you," Dad said, when Dean was through.

"No, stay," Dean asked, but he didn't mean it. Or rather, he truly both wanted his father to stay and for that swampy, burned corpsey smell to get as far away from him as possible. His father compromised and went to stand in the doorway, almost, but not quite far enough away. Dean still felt the unending queasiness, but then, his body would have found something else to be nauseated at if Dad wasn't there. "I heard from Sam last night. He's safe and happy. He was at a college party."

John's expression grew thunderous, then stony for a while, before softening slightly. "I'm sorry, Dean. I shouldn't lay my problems with Sam at your feet. Its just that I need to know my boys are safe and I can't do that when he's away from me. I need to know that both of you are safe."

"Sam's fine," Dean said. He was glad Sam was gone, away being happy. His whole being hungered for Sam, to have him near and close. Nothing was quite right without him. Mostly though, Dean was just pleased to hear that Sam was making his own way out there, that he was fine without either of them. He needed Sam, but knew his needs were selfish.

"But you're not," Dad said. "I need to know you're okay too. I need you, Dean."

***

John looked at his boy and he didn't see just Dean's present self. He saw the tiny baby that had been put into his arms twenty two years ago, with the strangely old and wise eyes. He saw the eager and loving little boy who looked at his baby brother with pure adoration. He saw the ten year old boy, burdened with responsibility, frozen by dire fear as a Shtriga attacked Sam, and afterwards, devastated with guilt that he hadn't been able to act. John still felt guilty about that, that he hadn't been there to protect the both of them. He saw the obnoxious but still utterly capable young man, not just taking up the hunt, but still able to take such good care of Sam. And now he saw just how sick Dean really was. Dean wasn't just ill. He was dying. He was too weak to sit up in bed, his skin decidedly yellow, cheek bones like knives in an emaciated face. More tubes than before disappeared under the hospital gown. But more than anything, John knew that look in his eyes, seen it before in the eyes of other men who'd all been dead less than two weeks later. Dean had given up, and if John didn't do something, he'd lose him.

He was playing dirty pool and John Winchester knew it, but then, didn't he know all about dirty pool? Sometimes you had to play it that way.

"I need you out of that hospital bed," John said, only because he knew that Dean would move mountains for his family, for total strangers, even when he wouldn't lift a finger to help himself, because he thought he didn't deserve it, that he wasn't worth helping. John wished he didn't know the roots of Dean's feelings of self-loathing and unworthiness but he knew his son all too well. Knew that he himself was the source of so much of it with every harsh word he'd said to a once sensitive boy, every demand he'd laid on him, with every time he'd made Dean put Sam's needs first over his own. John Winchester felt some of that self-loathing at this moment as he realized how true it was, how much he needed his son to be strong and haul his ass out of bed, and that his own actions were so very much the cause of Dean lying here, not thinking his life was worth more than a half formed fetus, fathered by god knew who. And John Winchester couldn't, wouldn't have changed what he did, because he'd needed Dean hunting and at his back.

Dean was the one who took care of them. Took care of him. He thought about all the times Dean's sure and steady hands had stitched him together. He thought of Dean, when he was just a kid, putting his hand on John's shoulder after a hunt and telling him it was okay. Dean had taken care of Sam like he was the kid's parent. All without complaint. He had always, almost literally, done everything John had asked of him.

And he would now.

If he felt a shudder of guilt at what he was about to do run through him, it was assuaged by the fact it was for Dean's own good. That it was the best choice in the opinion of the doctors who were taking care of him. It was a decision that Dean obviously wasn't able to make on his own.

"Dean, you need to tell the doctor that you're going to end this pregnancy," John said. "Because I need you back on your feet. I need you to be okay."

Dean squeezed his eyes shut, as if he were trying to hold back tears or something, then he nodded, and, as if the words were pure pain, he said, "Yeah. Okay."

Dean's assent and co-operation obtained, John went in search of Dean's doctor. When he found her, John said, "He's worse than when I left."

She didn't say anything about it, but the look she gave him was purely accusatory, as if daring him to defend his absence. He read a lot into that look, the crisis points he'd missed that Dean hadn't told him about, but he tried to push through that. It didn't matter. He was here now. Eventually, she did say "He had a bout of emesis so violent that the last esophageal tear was complete, through all the layers, not just through the mucosa. We repaired it surgically, but he still has a chest tube to drain the resulting pleural effusion. He's on antibiotic therapy for mediastinitis, but sepsis is still a real possibility. I can give you the whole shopping list of anti-emetics we've tried and that have failed him. The TPN has only helped slightly and he's not tolerating it well. We're having problems keeping his PICC line clear of clots. That's not even touching on the impending organ failure, the malnutrition and the anemia. Honestly, he's well on his way to circling the drain."

"I got him to agree to the abortion," John said. 'It's hard for him. Dean has a younger brother that left us to go off to college. Dean thrives on people needing him, he always has and Sam doesn't need him any more."

"But a baby would. For years," she said, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. If I thought there were any other treatment that would save his life..."

***

Dean thought about what he'd agreed to. He'd agreed to throw his baby under the bus. He'd already had the laminaria up inside him since yesterday. They were dilating him, he'd been told, so they could extract the fetus. They were going to be coming for him any minute now, to do the surgery itself. He tried to tell himself what the doctor said, that it wasn't him or the baby, it was the baby or him and the baby. His Dad needed him, he thought. His Dad needed him out of this bed, needed him not to be dead. He was his father's only son left, Sam had left them forever, late night calls from parties notwithstanding. Even if Sam came back it would never be the same. Their family had broken and Dean was needed to shore up and patch up what was left of it.

He touched his lower belly, the small swell of it, and he said, "I'm sorry, little guy. I really am. The doctor says it wouldn't be good for you to be born, even if I could carry you without getting sicker. Says you're not right. Maybe that's because of who your daddy was. I hope, you know, if there really is a God, and I don't really think there is, but if there is, that you get a second chance. Get put into the uterus of someone who isn't such a fuck up."

Eventually, a nurse, he thought her name might have been Vicki, came in carrying a syringe. "Just a sedative," she said. "Get you all relaxed."

She shot it into the port of his IV and immediately, he found it impossible to keep his eyes open. They drooped, then blackness rushed up to greet him. After what seemed like an eternity, he woke into a dream and for once, it wasn't some nightmare about the fire, or one hunt or the other gone wrong. In the dream, he was sitting in a chair next to his hospital bed, holding a soft, small little bundle, wrapped in a blanket. He peeked inside and it was a baby. His baby. Dean always thought of himself as a hardass. He was as tough as they came, but he looked at the sparse brown curls and pink cheeks and he was lost in love with his boy. Dean might have a hard exterior, but he knew that inside, he was as gooey as melted caramel. He just wanted to hold this tiny creature forever, keep him safe from everything, do anything he needed, wanted to call him Sammy after his other daddy.

But there was this girl in the room with him. She had dark hair and a soft, sympathetic look in her eyes. Dean knew that he shouldn't look over to his left, because of what he'd see over there- his still, drugged body. His flesh. The meatsuit. Then the orderlies and nurses came in and transferred his body to a gurney. He looked at the girl, who seemed so familiar somehow, but he didn't know her.

"Hello, Dean," she said, smiling sadly.

"Do I know you?" he demanded.

"Not yet, but you will some day," she said. "My name is Tessa. I'm a Reaper."

Dean didn't want to get up, didn't want to follow his body down the hallway. He knew where they were taking him, what they were going to do to him and his baby, but he felt compelled to follow the gurney as it was pushed down tiled hallways. Even as he walked, he tried to remember what a Reaper was, he sort of remembered reading about them in Dad's notebook the couple of times he'd gotten a peek inside. Reaper, he thought. As in grim reaper.

"Are you here for me?" he asked, as they rolled him into an operating room. His OB was there, gowned in green, cap on, mask already up. Dean could read the grimness on her face, even through the mask. She probably didn't have to do this too often. Most of the pregnancies she attended probably ended with a living baby.

"No, not for you," Tessa said. She looked meaningfully at the baby in his arms.

Even though he'd known why she was here. Why he was here, what was going to happen, it was like someone slashed a scalpel into his heart. "You have to take me too," he pleaded. "I can't let you take him. He's just a baby. He can't die, not alone."

"Babies die all the time. Even before they're ever born," she said, holding out her arms for the bundle in his arms. "I'm sorry. It's his time and it's not yours. You have to stay and you have to let him go."

"Where is he going? If there's you, that means that there's a Heaven, right? He'll be okay there, won't he?"

"Spoilers, Dean," she said. "You'll find out later. It's time for me to take him. Please."

She held out her arms, and then, only because she looked kind and because her eyes looked at him with something that seemed like love, or at least affection, and because he knew, he knew deep down that he was never meant to keep this one, he placed his baby in her arms. "I wish I could take you now. It might be kinder," she said, and she stroked his right temple briefly and he could feel it like a seismic ripple through his whole existence. "But there are consequences when the natural order is broken."

She pulled the baby close in her arms and pressed a little kiss to his forehead. Then, Tessa walked, unseen, among the doctors and nurses, up to Dean's body on the table. She laid a hand on the swell of Dean's belly, small, hard and round and Dean knew that his baby was dead.

"I'm sorry, Dean. I really am," She said. "It's time for us to go. We'll meet again in a few years. You won't remember me, but I'll know you."

Then she walked away and things kind of faded after that, sort of got hazy, then completely dark. When he woke, he was alone, completely alone for the first time in months, but then his dad walked into the room and Dean didn't smell the eau de toasted corpse odor that had lingered around him for months.

"How you doing, son?" John asked as he took the chair by Dean's bed. The expression on his face was equal parts sorrow and relief.

I just killed my baby, but other than that, just peachy, Dean thought, but what he said was, "I'm fine."

John placed a small wooden box in Dean's hands. It was satin smooth, made out of dark stained walnut, with a silvery metal plaque that looked like it was meant for engraving. And even though Dean had some idea of what was in it, he had to ask, "What's this?"

"I thought, well, I thought you'd feel better knowing he wasn't just...disposed of, like he was medical waste or something. And I thought it was better he was burned. Even a fetus has the potential to become a vengeful spirit."

His baby, salted and burned, even before birth. Even though he'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't cry, a single tear escaped and ran down his cheek. Dean rubbed it off instantly, as if it were acid, burning him. He tried to tell himself that this was just his father's way of caring, that it was him showing love and concern. Well, his father's way just sucked sometimes, because he just had no fucking idea how a little wood cube with the ashes of all that had remained to him of Sam was supposed to make him feel better. The sum of us had come to add up to a big fat zero.

"I just," Dean said. "I just can't."

"It's okay. You don't have to. I'll take care of him," Dad said, as he collected the little box from Dean's unresisting hands. "I'll make sure he stays safe."

After a long while of uncomfortable silence, Dean ventured what he was pretty sure was a neutral question, "So, how long until I get sprung from this joint? This afternoon, maybe?"

Instead, his Dad winced and said, "You've got a lot of recovery in front of you. Let's just take it a step at a time. You've been pretty heavily sedated for several days. It should have been routine, but they nearly lost you on the table. I guess they nicked an artery and you nearly bled out before they could control it."

"I nearly died?"

"Just focus on getting better," his Dad said. "I'm glad you're still with me."

And that would be all they would ever say about it, Dean could see. Dean could see just how spooked Dad had been by it. He'd very nearly let his Dad down, nearly left him alone when he was needed.

Actually, it turned out that recovering from not eating for several months was an involved process. You couldn't just start eating whatever the hell you wanted right away. Even though Dean thought he'd be starving for a burger, he could hardly manage the liquids and soft solids they started him on. His intake was carefully managed at the start, and they were testing his blood constantly. Something called refeeding syndrome was a strong risk. Even despite the careful reintroduction to real food, Dean suffered from freaking colic and acid reflux.

***

The damn dog heard the car before Bobby did and started barking his fool head off. Moments later, there was the distinctive roar of the Winchester's car. Bobby put the grimoire he'd been reading aside, saying, "Balls!"

What the hell business did John Winchester think he had just dropping by unannounced, not so much as a two minute phone call? The man had been stepping on Bobby's last nerve the last time they'd met and while he hadn't actually pulled a gun on the man, he'd been so very, very tempted. Bobby looked longingly at his unfinished mug of coffee, still hot. So much for his leisurely morning. When Winchester showed up, it wasn't just because he wanted to visit. It was because he wanted something- more often than not, he showed up bleeding, or with a body that needed to be disappeared. On the same table as his coffee Bobby had left a partial bottle of hunter's helper. He grabbed it, added a generous lashing to his coffee and got to his feet to go see what Winchester needed help with this time.

Bobby stood on his porch as that black beast of a car rolled up to his house. John got out first, but there was someone in the passenger seat, Bobby couldn't see who through the glare of the morning sun on the window glass. John didn't do more than acknowledge Bobby with a wave before he walked around to the passenger side of the car. He opened the car door, like you would for a kid or maybe like men used to for women. John said something soft to the passenger inside and offered his hands. Whoever was getting out grabbed them and actually used them to haul himself out of his seat.

For a long minute, Bobby couldn't figure out that the passenger was Dean. This person was too skinny, too haggard, too ragged to be Dean. If nothing else, Dean had always kept his hair in a neat, spiky kind of look, perfectly combed, never too long. This man had lanky, limp hair that grew down over his forehead, about four, five months overdue for a cut. And skinny. Dean had always been solid, even as a boy there'd been broadness to his form. There were a few, awkward, lanky, teen years where the boy's height gained faster than the rest of him could keep up, but otherwise, Dean was built like his father. This man, though, was beyond skinny. He was practically skeletal. And he started shivering the instant he got out of the car. It couldn't be Dean, but then he looked up and Bobby could see his face and it was, without a shadow of a doubt, Dean.

Though Bobby had been prepared to shoo John off, tell him to go bother some other sucker, there was no way that Bobby could do that to the boy. Not when Dean had been so very obviously sick and probably sick to near death. Bobby instantly began running possible supernatural causes through his mind as well as non-supernatural, but no less deadly causes. Cancer, was his first thought.

"Idjit," Bobby called out. "What the hell are you doing, traveling when your boy is so sick?"

"Actually, I'm a lot better than I was, Bobby," Dean said. He was walking towards the house with painfully slow, effortful steps.

"Well, you look like shit. Get your ass in here, before you catch your death of cold or something."

It took a few minutes to get Dean inside, with John hovering solicitously at his elbow as he climbed the steps. They settled him on the sofa in the library, and then, because Dean couldn't stop shivering, Bobby got a fire started quick and made Dean move to the seat closest to the fireplace, before he motioned John into the kitchen with sharp looks and nothing more.

"What the hell happened to him?" Bobby demanded the instant they were in the other room.

"I nearly lost him, Bobby," John said, and he braced his hands on the countertop, hung his head. "He got so sick. Then he nearly died on the table. Even now, he's as weak as a kitten. I can't take him with me."

"Your son just nearly died, so first chance you get, you dump him at my door so you can go play Captain Ahab? You're a hell of a piece of work, Winchester."

John just shook his head. Not like Bobby had ever pulled his verbal punches. He wouldn't know how, even if he'd been so inclined. Winchester was used to it. Sometimes Bobby thought the only thing his relationship with the man had going for it was mutual blunt honesty. Blunt like blunt force trauma.

"Whatever you think of me, can Dean stay with you?"

Bobby might have mumbled idjit again and added, "Dean doesn't have to ask. He's always got a bed here. How'd he get sick? Is it cancer?"

"Dean was pregnant. The baby made him sick. Being pregnant nearly killed him," John said. Then he explained about the violent, uncontrollable vomiting that had plagued Dean, about the month in the hospital, and finally, about the medically necessary abortion that had caused Dean to nearly bleed out on the table.

"Not that I was ready to be a grandfather, but I'd have been so happy for him," John said. "I think losing the baby is harder on him than being sick to death."

Bobby thought about Dean and how dim the light in his eyes had been, just how busted down to nothing he'd looked. How the boy was wrapped up in a blanket in front of the fire. Normally, by now, Dean would have found some automobile or another to get under the hood of. The last thing the boy needed was his crapsack excuse of a father to be bringing him down when he needed everything possible to lift him up. Yeah, John Winchester loved his boys so much it could be kind of scary at times, but that didn't mean he was any less horrible at actually being the kind of father those boys of his needed. Bobby got it. Just because someone was family didn't mean they were good for you. In fact, chances were, they'd be worse for you than some random stranger on the street.

"When you taking off?" Bobby asked and wasn't surprised at all to hear than John didn't even plan to spend the night. He was headed out to a lead in Oregon. He thought he could make it halfway through to Montana before he had to stop. "Dean know you're planning on ditching him here?"

John was just silent.

"You son of a bitch," Bobby said. "You go and you tell him now."

"He understands, Bobby," John said. "He knows he's not any good to me when he can hardly stand like this. I need him well."

"Get the hell out of my kitchen and off my property, Winchester," Bobby ordered. "Just get."

Did the man even listen to what he was saying? Did he even think about what kind of crap came out of his mouth? Then slowly, it dawned on Winchester just what had been said. "That's not what I meant, Bobby. It's just that I have to get to Oregon. It's a series of house fires, all families with six month old babies and mothers killed in the blaze. I can't let this lead get away but I can't take him. I can't let Dean get that close to this bastard, not when he's so vulnerable. Dean has no reserves left at this point."

And it was almost enough.

"He can stay here until he's ready to get back back hunting," Bobby said. "And until then, you'd better not be such a goddamn stranger."

Winchester tried to offer him money, for Dean's expenses, and Bobby almost accepted, because honestly, the salvage business didn't exactly leave him rolling in the green and his sideline of hunting took a big chunk of any cash he could come up with, not to mention his rare and expensive books habit. But Winchester was trying to buy his way out of the guilt he obviously felt, so Bobby said, "He's a grown man. He'll work it off when he's able."

There was some strange flinch in Winchester's eyes when Bobby said Dean was a grown man. The man obviously didn't think of his son as a grown man, or at least not most of the time. Winchester was such a big damn ball of contradictions that Bobby could hardly stand it. Didn't think his son was grown, but had seen no problem leaving the boy alone for weeks, even when Dean had truly been just a boy. Loved his boy like crazy, but thought the best way to express that was to dump him off and walk away. The man was obviously doing the best he could with Dean, but that best was a piss poor excuse for fatherhood. There really wasn't anything more to say, so Bobby stayed in the kitchen and sipped at his coffee, grimacing at the bite of the rot gut he'd added, as Winchester said goodbye to his boy.

After Bobby heard the front door slam shut and the black beast rumble away, he came out to the library. Dean had curled his legs up under the blanket and was staring blankly into the fire.

"Did he you tell you?" Dean asked.

"Tell me what? That you been near sick to death? He did," Bobby said. "But you're mending now."

"Here," Dean said. He pushed a couple of photocopied pages at Bobby. "It's my training program and meal plans. To get me back on my feet."

Bobby looked the pages over for a minute, shaking his head in disbelief. "Say's here you're supposed to be running two miles tomorrow morning."

"I can handle it. I did a mile and a half this morning, got a good time too. Don't know why I'm still so exhausted right now though."

Bobby tossed the pages into the fire place and it flared briefly, burned up quickly and the ashes floated up the chimney. That training program seemed like an incitement to exhaustion, at least this early in Dean's recovery, and bore the hallmarks of Winchester's Marine hard ass attitude all over it. The boy needed coddling more than either of them would ever admit. As for the so called meal plans, Bobby hadn't seen one damn thing on them he knew Dean actually liked to eat, and seemed like it was more important to just get some damn meat on the boy's bones before you started worrying about shoving egg whites and vegetables down his throat.

"How about you get steady on walking before you try running? Your dad just about carried you in from the car. I wasn't planning on a big dinner for myself, but you think you're up for a trip to Jimmie's in town? That's the place with the rhubarb-custard pie you liked."

"And the kuchen, right?" Dean said, just the hint of a smile on his face.

"Yeah, that's pretty good too," Bobby said. Bobby wasn't much for sweet things himself most of the time, but he made an exception for Jimmie's, because Jimmie herself made them fresh every morning. "So, you up for that?"

Dean shook his head slowly. "Maybe tomorrow. Right now, I just want to get to sleep."

"I'll see if I got a can of soup or something for you then," Bobby said, trying to remember if it was tomato rice soup the kid liked or chicken with stars. Dean didn't say yes or no to that, but it was getting on to lunch time and there wasn't any question in Bobby's mind that the boy should eat something, so he went back to the kitchen to mess around for a while. There weren't any canned soups in his cupboard, but there were a couple of cans of V-8 from this kick he'd been on a while back of trying to get some vegetables inside him. And there was a pack of minute rice. So that would have to do. He fussed with heating things up and making rice and tossing in some seasoning and it didn't taste half bad by the time he was finished. As he stirred, he thought about John Winchester's boys and how much they were near to sons to him. He wondered how Sam was doing at that college of his. Mostly though, he thought about Dean- how defeated the boy seemed and if there was anything he could do about it. Thought about how Dean didn't even seem to care that he'd been dumped off on Bobby like so much unnecessary luggage.

Eventually, he brought out a big, deep bowl of the soup for Dean and one for himself. He put the bowl in Dean's hands, so he could sip at it like it was in a mug. Dean didn't eat, just put the bowl to the side and pulled the blanket around him tighter. "I don't want to be a bother. You putting me in the guest room? I'll just go on up."

"More of a bother if you don't eat the damn food I set in front of you," Bobby noted, keeping his voice mild. 'What the hell happened to you, Dean? You're a bag of skin and bones. I ain't ever seen you not wanting to eat before."

"When you spend over four months throwing up anything that goes in your mouth, it gets kind of hard to get started again," Dean said. "Did he tell you about that? That I got knocked up with a bastard child and couldn't even keep the damn thing alive until it was born."

"He told me you fought tooth and nail to keep your baby and you'd rather have died than give him up but he wouldn't let you," Bobby said. "Your Dad told me he'd never been more afraid for your life."

"Did he tell you that my baby would have been handicapped if he survived. That there was stuff wrong with him? Aren't you going to tell me it's for the best he didn't make it?"

"Hell, no! I'm going to tell you that life is a goddamn tragedy sometimes and all you can do is what you have to do," Bobby said, thinking of Karen for some reason. That was a pain, that though it was years old and the sharp edges had worn off of, never failed to weigh down his soul. Maybe he could have saved her what with what he knew now, but at the time, he did the best he could and it hadn't been good enough. "Sometimes the people you love the most die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Then all you can do is focus on putting one foot in front of the other and getting by. So eat your soup."

"That's your answer?" Dean asked, sounding raw and wounded. "That's the best you got? Life sucks?"

"And then you die," Bobby said, gravely. "That don't mean you get out of your obligation to kick it in the ass as best you can. You got things to do still, Dean. Things to hunt. People you can save. So eat your soup and get better and get back on the horse."

Wouldn't you know it but Dean did pick up his soup again and took a small sip of it, then another, until over half the bowl Bobby had given him was gone. It was a little thing, but then you had to start out with the little things. You didn't just set a boy who nearly died recently to multi mile runs and Marine calisthenics. It didn't matter how good your intentions were or what you said if your actions didn't match up to what you felt in your heart. Maybe John had done the right thing by bringing the Dean here, because if Dean's pages had been an example of it, John's plan for Dean's recovery would have worn him down even further, to a nub. Of course, Bobby's words hadn't exactly been kind and nurturing. Words mattered, of course, but Dean needed a little tough love right now too, and actions mattered more, at least to Bobby they did.

"Right, so I got some parts I have to deliver tomorrow," Bobby said. "And then was thinking you need a hair cut and we can stop at Jimmie's. Then, maybe a poke around in the guts of this Bel-Air I found in a barn, see if it can be sold to a restorer or if I'll have to part her out. Sound like a plan?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I think I can handle that."

***

It was nearly six months before Bobby said to him, in that way that only Bobby could, and make it sound loving, "What the hell are your lazy bones still cluttering up my place for?"

So Dean had called his father and when they were out on the road together, Dean had begun training again in earnest. His parts in the hunts were small, like they'd been when Dean had first started out, but they grew in importance. Dean felt assured, knowing his Dad could count on him. He felt almost back on his game, almost where he'd been before he'd gotten pregnant. Some two and half, nearly three years from the day he'd first collapsed in Cadillac, Dad handed him a file folder full of newspaper clippings from the Times-Picayune and said, "I think you got this one, son." Dean had felt ready, felt proud that Dad thought he ready for a major hunt of his own, one that was bound to be dangerous.

He spent over a month in New Orleans, having not yet tracked down all the voodooiennes involved in the case, when he suddenly realized, he hadn't heard from his father in weeks, not a call, not a text, nothing. He hadn't been in a hurry before, but he wrapped all his loose ends up in a couple of days. A few weeks after that, after searching on his own for a while and coming up with bupkis, even as the loneliness ground on him, he found himself in Sam's apartment in Palo Alto saying, "Okay. All right. We gotta talk."

He was talking about Dad and Dad only. Dean looked around and the apartment Sam was living in was probably the nicest place that Sam had ever lived, at least it was during the time that Dean had known him. And then Sam's girl came out and Dean knew that he would never tell Sam what had happened to him. Maybe Dean was a fuck up who couldn't even carry a baby without screwing it up so bad that it almost killed him, but Sam didn't need the burden of knowing that he'd had a son that had never made it out of the womb alive.

Later, as they were driving to Jericho, Sam said something. It was night, late, or really early depending on how you looked at it and they were both simmering with old resentments even as it felt like the best damn thing in the world, to have his brother back by his side. To have his family there with him.

"You know, you never called me back after you got out of the hospital that one time," Sam said.

"What time was that?" Dean said, lightly, even though he knew damn well exactly what time Sam was referring to.

"Your stomach thing," Sam said. "You said you got dehydrated, were in the hospital a couple days."

Dean lied. "Food poisoning. Salmonella. You know truck stop food and how I'll eat anything."

"And that was all it was? Dean, I worried for months about you," Sam said. "You couldn't pick up the phone and tell me you were okay?"

"My phone wasn't exactly ringing off the hook with your calls. If I'd called, would you have answered?" Dean countered, and Sam had no answer for that.

Dean knew though. Sam had wanted to start over. He'd wanted to be free of his family. He'd wanted to forget. But he'd wanted to have it both ways. He'd wanted Dean to be there when the times were good. When the parties made him think of the fun things he'd done with Dean. When he wanted to show off his cool older brother at Parent's weekend. He wouldn't have wanted to be around to see the life that they'd created together flutter, then fail in short months. He was too young to be counted on to help Dean pick up the pieces. He wouldn't have wanted to be there for the long weeks, even months afterwards where Dean couldn't pull his own weight and then some.

"I'm here now," Sam said, sharply. "Doesn't that count for something?"

"Yeah, something," Dean said. But it didn't count for enough that Dean thought he could break open the scab on his deepest wound and let Sam poke around inside it.

***

There were several times, over the years, where Dean almost spilled it.

The first time was the first time they were going to sleep together again, not long after he and Sam drove away from Palo Alto, Sam's girl dead by the hand of the same thing that had killed their mother. Sam had automatically reached for a condom from his bag and Dean had said, "I got the birth control thing covered. Hold on, let me check."

Then Dean put a couple of fingers up inside himself and felt for the short lengths of string that would mean his IUD was still safely in place. "Yup, we're good to go," Dean said, upon finding them. Sam had just looked puzzled and so Dean had explained about the IUD.

"Why do you have an IUD?" Sam had demanded.

"Because I can't find a doctor who's willing to tie my tubes," Dean had said, which was the truth. Even when he'd explained about the hyperemesis gravidarum and just how firmly his mind was set on never, ever going through that again, none of the doctors he'd consulted had been willing to tie the tubes of a carrier who was, as they put it, still so very young, who might change his mind in a few years, that the hyperemesis wasn't a sure thing, that getting ones tubes tied was so very permanent. That had been kind of the point, as far as Dean was concerned. At least the IUD was semi permanent. He never had to think about it, just check for the strings every now and then. He'd have to get it replaced in four, five years, but other than that, it was almost error free and effortless.

"You don't want to have kids, ever?" Sam asked, sounding shocked.

"I don't want to be pregnant ever, Sam," Dean said.

"But why? You'd make a great mom. Or dad," Sam said. "I've seen you with kids."

"I..." Dean opened his mouth and realized he was about it spill it, say how much he really did want kids, but there was the issue how sick he'd been and how he was pretty sure that another attempt would be the end of him. It had been fresh and raw then, the memories of acid spilling from his throat, the way his guts would churn, twist and cramp. The fierce and burning pain from when his esophagus had burst open in side of him, pain so bad he'd thought he'd been dying. He'd been about to kick Sam out of his bed and curl up around his memories instead, then he'd taken another look at Sam, at his damn floppy curls and his smile and the sweet memories prevailed. He thought about how it had felt when Sam had moved in him and he'd wanted that back. Only he had to make one thing clear.

"I don't want to get pregnant and that should be good enough reason in itself not to. Now, did you want inside my pussy or what?"

So, Sam had shut his cakehole and gotten back to the business of getting Dean off and for once, for this one issue, he didn't push it. Didn't keep bringing it up, didn't pick at it like he did for so many things.

Then there was the time they'd gotten called to deal with Dad's lock up. At first, it was kind of sweet, seeing the things that Dad had thought worthy of keeping locked up tight, protected. The few mementos of their childhood, like his first sawn off and Sam's soccer trophy, had been scattered among the claymores and curse boxes. Then Dean had seen it, the little wood box. He hadn't laid eyes on that little souvenir of a terrible year for over four years at that point, but he knew exactly what it was. It was a searing ache to see it here, covered in dust, left alone. While Sam was looking closely at his damn soccer trophy, Dean quickly shoved the damn box with his baby's ashes in it into his pocket. He couldn't leave his baby here with nothing but weapons, curse boxes and a warthog skull for company, even if it was probably more secure here than just about any other place.

"What's that, Dean?" Sam had asked.

"Nothing," Dean said. "Just leave it, okay?"

And again, Sam just left it. It was as if he had some sixth sense for the thing that was so tender and raw that Dean couldn't even bear to examine it, and he left it alone, not wanting to cause Dean more pain. Because they'd been through some bad shit over the years, but this was the worst thing Dean had gone through so far. Yeah, Dad's death was bad, and the whole damn deal to save Sam's life was bad, but this was worse. And Dean was kind of glad that he hadn't known about crossroad deals back when he'd been pregnant, because he would have taken one in an instant for the life of his baby, and then he wouldn't have had a soul to trade for Sam's life.

The next time, he saw Bobby, he gave him the little walnut box to watch. Bobby knew what it was without having to be told, but then, Bobby was the only one around now who ever knew that Dean had once been pregnant. In the early days of his recovery, Dad had taken him to Bobby's, to be coddled and cared for in a way that John Winchester couldn't, especially on the road. Bobby knew that Dean had been pregnant and sick to near death from it, but not by who. Then, just as he was now, his gruffness covered up a love that was constant and deep, that could be relied on utterly. But he also didn't sugar coat things either.

"You ever going to tell your brother what happened?" Bobby asked, as he turned the box over in his hands, feeling the smooth finish of the wood.

"Can't see as it's any of his business. He wasn't there and the past is the past. It's done and over with. None of his concern," Dean said. Bobby turned away from Dean then, looking for some place to stash the box, muttering something that sounded like 'idjit'.

When Dean came back from hell, all his old scars gone and literally rehymenated, he hadn't been prepared for the IUD to be gone too. Then Sam had wanted to make love again before Dean had had a chance to get to planned parenthood. Part of Dean was a little tickled to be able to offer his refound virginity to his brother, because it had been long gone their first time, but mostly Dean recoiled at the thought of even a chance of getting pregnant again.

"I've got condoms," Sam had protested when Dean had refused him access, on the grounds of no birth control.

"Fifteen percent failure rate," Dean had said. "Not good enough. I'm not getting pregnant."

He bit off the 'again' so fast it was a wonder he didn't bite his tongue too. Sam looked like he was going to storm off, maybe find that bitch Ruby again, so Dean put his best smile on, the one that could charm the pants off just about anyone. His brother was no exception. Dean asked the question just about no man had ever said no to, "So, you want a blow job?"

Later, in the shower afterwards, as Sam was sleeping it off, he took his own hymen, shoving fingers up in himself until he felt a painful burning and he saw blood. No doctor was going to believe that a virgin needed an IUD.

There were other times, less confrontational, where he thought about telling Sam. They were out in the middle of nowhere, just sitting on the hood of the Impala, staring up at the stars, saying nothing for hours. Dean had never felt so good as he did, being there with Sam and he thought maybe, just maybe, he could share his secret sorrow and guilt. He felt closer to Sam at that moment than he had for a long, long time. Then Sam had sighed and smiled and looked so damn happy that Dean couldn't have borne diluting that happiness even slightly. He didn't say anything.

In late 2012, Dean nearly gave himself away for the first time in years. They were just watching the morning news in a hotel room somewhere. There was a princess and the newscaster said that she'd just been admitted to the hospital for hyperemesis gravidarum. Even though normally Dean could have given a shit about some celebrity royal, the words slipped right from his mouth. "Son of a bitch," he'd said, softly. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Luckily, Sam hadn't been paying attention. He'd been at the sink only half listening to the news as he took care of his grooming, carefully shaving around those ridiculous side burns of his. "What was that?" he'd called out from the bathroom.

"Nothing important," Dean said. "Dunno why we watch this crap that passes for news these days. Shake a leg, Sam. I wanna hit the road sometime this century."

He did tell Sam eventually.

It was the night that the Angels fell. The night that Sam did not slam the gates of Hell shut. It hurt, hearing that Sam thought his biggest sin was how he'd let Dean down, so many times. And it wasn't that Sam hadn't let Dean down sometimes- that thing with Ruby was a doozy, but they'd gotten over it. They always had and they were still them at the end of it. It wasn't as if Dean were some paragon himself. There were ways that Dean had let Sam down that Sam didn't even know about.

It wasn't until later, as they were driving back to Kansas in the Impala that Dean told him. They were heading back to the bunker, to check on Kevin. They'd figure out what to do next after that. Find Castiel maybe?

As Dean drove, the rumble of the Impala's engine and tires on the road were comfortable, soothing. Familiar. It was the strongest sound he knew, the one that never failed to put him, in some crucial way, at ease, at least for as long as he was at the wheel. How many times had they made a night drive like this? Dean thought about the falling angels, like meteors in the sky and he knew that more than ever, he and Sam would be needed. Who else had the knowledge and skills not to mention the weapons, to keep those sons of bitches in line. On the other side of the front seat, Sam leaned against the window, not talking, not moving. He was okay. He had to be. He'd recover from the trials. Dean couldn't believe anything else was true.

"You know, I let you down too. Too many goddamn times," Dean said, because somehow, this was confession time. He couldn't look at Sam. He watched the road ahead of them, the golden beams of the Impala's headlights pooling on the black asphalt, his own version of lighting a candle instead of cursing the dark.

"No, Dean," Sam said. "You never have. You've done more for me and given more to me than anyone has a right to expect."

"I have. I let you get killed. At least, oh, hell, I've lost track of the number of times," Dean said, thinking not just of Cold Oak and Stull, but the time they ended up shot and ended up in Heaven and the other times. When Anna killed him and Michael resurrected him.

"You know you'll never catch up with me for the number of times you died on my watch," Sam said.

He claimed, not that Dean remembered them in any way, that Dean had died hundreds of times during one day that repeated again and again.

"Doesn't count," Dean said. "I'm not even sure you could say that was really me. I sure as hell don't remember it."

"It doesn't matter. The point is that I'm the one who is always letting you down, always the one screwing up," Sam said.

"Would you just let me have this moment?" Dean asked. "You got your chance to confess. I have something I need to say."

Sam piped down. He seemed to see that this was important to Dean. He sat in the passenger seat of the Impala and waited for Dean to speak.

"I couldn't keep our baby alive," Dean confessed.

"What baby? I'd have known if you were ever pregnant. Anyway, you're freaking paranoid about birth control."

Dean gripped the wheel and drove. He stared out at the blackness. It was unrelieved except for the twinkling of the stars and a few, small lights in the far distance, some kind of small town.

"The one we conceived that summer before you went away to Stanford," Dean said. "I was pregnant that night you went away. It was one of the worst nights of my life. And then I got sick. Real sick. I ended up in the hospital for over a month. You remember that time you called and I told you it was a stomach thing?"

"You said it was salmonella," Sam said, his voice flat, his first stage of being well and truly pissed off.

"It was a stomach thing, kind of. I'd been throwing up so bad my esophagus pretty much shredded itself. I nearly died."

"You nearly died of morning sickness?" Sam asked in disbelief. "Only you could do that."

"Hyperemesis gravidarum," Dean said. "I nearly died from internal bleeding when my esophagus ruptured. Then there was the major organ failure. My kidneys and liver pretty much shut up shop for a week or so. Or I might have bought it from one of the clots my PICC line kept throwing."

"And you miscarried while you were sick in the hospital?" Sam asked.

Dean almost lied. He almost said yes. It would have been the easy thing to do. A miscarriage wasn't your fault. It just happened. Your baby died, but it wasn't anything you did. What was the point of this confession if he wasn't going to go all out, balls to the wall, full-frontal truth?

"The doctor gave me a choice, said I wouldn't get better while I was pregnant. The baby and I could die together or I could let them take the baby and I could get better. So I let them take it. I threw our baby under the bus so I could live," Then, when Sam didn't say anything, Dean added, "I had an abortion."

"That's your big confession? That you chose life?"

"I didn't, Sam. Kind of the opposite of that."

"Yeah, you did. Your life," Sam said. He reached over and squeezed Dean's knee. "I'm sorry you had to go through that without me."

"You're not angry I killed our baby?"

"Why would I be angry that you did what it took not to die? I'm kind of pissed that you waited for over twelve years to tell me. Why did you lie to me on the phone? I'd have come. I'd have dropped everything and come to be with you."

"That's why I lied, Sam. I didn't want to draw you back into my shit," Dean said. "You were free. I mean, hell, I missed you like crazy and I wanted you back so bad, but you sounded so damn happy when you called. I wasn't about to be selfish. Stanford was good for you."

Sam was silent for a long time. "You know, I want to say that you were wrong, that I never belonged any place else but with you and Dad, but you're right. I was happy then, being where I was, but you needed me. I would have come then, just like I went with you when you needed help finding Dad. I hate it when you put my happiness over things you actually need."

"I got by fine," Dean said. And why couldn't Sam see that what Dean needed most, out of anything, was to see his brother be happy?

"Is this why you don't want kids?" Sam asked. "Because you're afraid of it happening again?"

"It's why I don't want to be pregnant ever again," Dean said. "I can't do it again. It broke me, Sam. It took months for Bobby to shove my parts back together and for them to kind of gel. I'm still kind of fragile around those edges. I don't want to have kids because I'm not good for anything but this. I'm a killer. I slit throats and whack off heads. I stared into the abyss too long and now I'm halfway to being a monster myself. That's what I learned in Purgatory, Sam. I fit in just fine with all the other monsters."

Sam made a kind of choked noise, then he was silent for a long, long time. It felt miles and miles passed under the wheels of the Impala, the only sound the rumble of the engine and the wheels on asphalt. Sam finally spoke, "You really believe that, don't you? You think that you're not worthy of the happy ending you keep wanting for me. You think you don't deserve more than this."

For some reason, Dean thought of something Cas had said to him a long time ago, that he thought he didn't deserve to be saved. Well, it was true then, he didn't. And it was true now. Dean didn't say anything. He just looked out to the horizon where the town lights had grown steadily larger and larger.

"I'm ninety-percent crap," Dean said.

"So are most people," Sam said. "The difference is that your other ten percent is made up of the most extraordinary man I've ever known. I love you. I wish you could see you how I see you. You deserve happiness, even more than I do."

"I really don't," Dean said. He thought about their latest failures. The people who'd died at Crowley's hand, the ones that they had saved before. He thought of how he'd been so selfish he wouldn't let Sam complete the trials and slam the gates of hell shut. About all the suffering and death that could have been stopped, but Dean was just so damn selfish that he couldn't imagine life without Sam. Sam would have made that sacrifice willingly, but it was Dean who stopped him. Sam who always was willing to make the sacrifice. Sam who had thrown himself into the pit to stop the apocalypse.

"You do," Sam said. "If only because I'm selfish. That happy ending you seem to think I deserve is only possible if you're there with me."

"You want a happy ending with the man who killed your baby?"

"You did what you had to do, Dean. I know you. You would have given your life for that kid if you could have, but you couldn't. That wasn't an choice. You took the less bad of two horrible options. You know, you're not the only Winchester who's had an abortion."

"Who?"

Sam nodded, meaning himself. Dean forgot that sometimes. Sam was a carrier too. He was just such a mammoth, hyper-masculine specimen that you forgot that sometimes.

"When?" Dean asked. Not believing what he was hearing. When had Sammy done that? He and Dean were in each other's pocket so much of the time, Dean couldn't imagine Sam having sex with him knowing about it, much less being pregnant.

"It was before I met Amelia. You'd just gotten blown to Purgatory. It was a casual hookup, his name was Andy, never knew his last name. He was a yoga instructor."

"Bendiest weekend ever?" Dean joked, trying to break the tension a little. Honestly, he felt a little sick at the thought of his brother with another man. They each had had their women, but he was supposed to be Sam's only man. But he got a hold of himself and his jealousy. They'd hashed that all out. Sam had thought he was dead, so he got a pass on a lot of things from that time. Still, Sam had conceived a child with this yoga instructor dude, regardless if he'd gotten rid of the child later and that was hard for Dean to hear.

"We had a fun weekend but there were consequences. I was all alone. I knew I wasn't in a good place. It was the right decision for me at the time. I don't regret it. I'd do it again in an instant."

"Wait, you let some guy named Andy top you and you never let me?"

"First, he might have been inside me, but he was not topping me in any way. Second, you never asked. I always figured you'd ask if you wanted to," Sam said. "Did you want to? Because I've always wanted that but you seemed so set on bottoming."

They were quiet together for a long time as Dean drove and then Sam spoke up again.

"How set are you on not ever having children? Because I want that at some point. I want kids. I want to get pregnant and I want that with you."

"We'll talk about it later," Dean said. There was just too much crap happening, like normal, to think about bringing a baby into it. By choice. Never mind the risks of having a child with his brother. Their baby that had died had had things wrong with it and there was a good chance that was because they were brothers. But Sam had spoke with such love and longing that Dean couldn't automatically dismiss him. Dean thought about what a kid from Sam would look like, what he'd be like. Dean wanted to meet that kid someday, yearned for it, even as he was certain it'd be the worst thing in the world for him to anything to do with that kid. Maybe if you added all of Sam's positives with Dean's negatives, the sum of them might still add up to something hugely positive?

The distant lights had grown close and become the outskirts of a medium sized town. Dean slowed down as the speed limit dropped to thirty-five when they passed city limits. They came across a two story motel of the kind they liked best, a relic from the fifties, this one, with a neon sign advertising vacancies. Dean was about to drive past it. They were only a couple of hours from the bunker at this point and his goal had been to drive straight through.

"Let's stop for tonight," Sam said. "I'm exhausted. I want a bed and about twelve hours spent horizontal."

"You sure? You can have your own bed in a couple hours. Sleep for days if you need to."

"Please, Dean," Sam said.

So instead of blowing past, Dean pulled into the Starlite Court's parking lot and stopped the Impala in front of the office door. Sam stayed in the passenger seat as Dean pulled open the glass door. No one was at the desk, but there seemed to be a small group of people gathered in the courtyard garden that could be reached through the door on the other side of the room. They were huddled around a big telescope, at least big for an amateur. They were gathered and talking in hushed tones, in the way that people did when they were witnessing a huge disaster. Dean wandered out into the garden and cleared his throat.

"Hey, is any of you here the manager? Can I get a room?"

An older guy, gray hair, with a blue plaid shirt broke away from the telescope and walked towards Dean, "Of course, we've just been watching the sky, seeing if there's anything more."

"Big meteor shower, right?"

"Young man, those were not meteors," the old man said as he started walking back over the flagstones towards the office. "Now, I don't have a lot of rooms left."

"What were they then?" Dean asked, though he knew damn well what they were even if he didn't know for sure what had happened. He was just curious what normal people thought was going on.

"Winged men," the old man pronounced. "Some of the guests believe them to be falling angels, some aliens of some kind. Either way, everything is changing tonight."

He was not wrong, Dean thought, but he didn't say anything. They'd reached the desk. The man reached under the counter and he pulled out a big sign in book. There was no sign of any kind of computer in evidence.

"Now, I have two rooms left. The Gemini, it has two twin beds. And the Copernicus suite- king bed, separate living room with kitchenette and a whirlpool tub."

Dean preferred a room with two queens when they could get it. More often than not, with Dean's nightmare issues, it was just better that each of them had their own bed, even if they tended to spend part of the night together too. A queen was almost big enough for the two of them, even if one was sasquatch sized like Sam. Still, one big bed had to be better than two tiny ones.

"I'll take the suite," Dean said, digging out his wallet, wondering which credit card he should use this time.

"You're here by yourself?"

"My partner's out in the car still," Dean said, presenting a credit card with Jake Elwood printed on the face. The man ran it through one of those old credit card imprinter things with the carbon slips. Dean looked through the clear glass door to see that Sam had climbed out of the car seat and was leaning against the car. He was staring up at the sky, as if expecting another wave of falling angels. Dean signed the book and a moment later, he was presented with keys. Honest to God keys. Even in dive places like this lately they were given key-cards, with their electronic locks. Things had changed tonight, but then, they were always changing, Dean thought. Getting worse mostly, but just changing no matter what.

Dean collected Sam and drove them around to the back side of the motel and in a few minutes, they were inside the Copernicus suite. Separate living and bedroom areas was a bit of an exaggeration. They were separated by a room divider screen made up of conjoined star shapes, but the kitchenette had a full sized fridge and things were clean, smelled good even. Hotel rooms tended towards either the cigarette scented or the overly perfumed. Sam stood in the middle of the living space, taking it all in and kind of swaying, like he was halfway to collapsing.

"Let's get you to the bed you insisted you had to have," Dean said, putting a hand on the small of Sam's back and leading him into the bedroom area. He got Sam's boots off. With Dean's help, Sam shucked his jeans off and laid down on the bed. Rather than the usual quilted scratchy bed spread, this bed had been made with a big fluffy duvet, with a cover printed with stars and suns and moons in deep blue and gold. All the suns and moons had faces, the sun smiling hugely to the moon, the moons seeming to glare and frown back. Dean thought for a moment of all the folk stories and lore where the moon was envious of the sun and how in reality, the moon's shine was just a reflection of the sun. Sometimes, Dean felt like the moon to Sam's sun, he was just shining back the man's brilliance at the world, but he never felt envious, just warmed by his warmth, lit by his light.

Sam buried himself under the duvet and burrowed himself in deep, giving himself up to sleep easily. Unlike Dean, Sam mostly had no problems sleeping, other than the brief period first where Sam had no soul, then where he had Lucifer living in his head, shredding up his already tattered soul. Sam without a soul hadn't needed the sleep and Sam with his busted up soul needed it desperately but couldn't get it. Funny that, that the soul of a person was what actually needed the sleep. That when the body most needed sleep, the frayed, damaged soul was what stopped them from getting it. He wondered at the state of his own soul- if someone, like his angel, were to look at it, would they see that it had been dirtied, broken? Tattered? Just barely kept glued together? Dean stayed up for a while, thinking, maybe having a drink or two, just enough to ease his way into sleep. He wondered about what horrors tomorrow might bring, and if maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be so bad. Angels were dicks, but they weren't evil like demons were. And yeah, the gates of Hell were still banging open, but then they knew a lot more than they ever did before about how to beat those bastards.

Eventually the exhaustion caught up with him too and he climbed into bed next to Sam, snugged himself up as close to Sam as he could without disturbing him. Sam rolled himself over without actually waking up so that Dean became the big spoon. He wrapped an arm over Sam's chest and pulled them closer, so that Sam's hair was in his face. He joked, at times, about cutting it all off, but in truth, he loved those flowing locks, the way they always smelled just like Sam, despite the fact that Sam used a combination of the little bottles of free shampoo from hotels and whatever was cheapest on the shelves of the Gas N Sip.

He thought about what Sam had said, about wanting kids, wanting to be pregnant some day. Dean still didn't believe that he'd be good for any kind of family, but if Sam wanted it, then he'd do his damnedest to give it to him. Maybe it was time for them to retire from the business anyway. They'd given so much, given everything to it, nearly their lives, several times and Sam had been on the verge of giving his life yet again. He wondered what it would feel like to top Sam, to put the baby that Sam said he wanted into him. Dean fell asleep thinking about these things, thinking maybe things might be looking up, despite everything. Dean thought, matter what, that the sum of us will always be more than just the two of us put together.