What was Hell like?

Sam's words ring in Dean's head, echoing, piercing, leaden. Like a heavyweight coming from the tops of the ropes...and falling from a great height, all at the same time. Like perhaps how Peter Parker felt, throwing his webs to either side of him to stop that moving train. Every time he blinked the memories away, they'd just come right back, like a stream of rain on a windshield after the wipers carried away a flood.

Although they were all discussing how Dean came back from Hell, Hell itself wasn't necessarily at the forefront of his mind. It was easy to be distracted with Katherine just ten feet from him...and how he had to tame every fiber of his being that told him to sit by her, to touch her. It was much easier to keep the nightmares from the forefront of his mind when he had that to distract him.

But she stormed out of the hotel room, and Bobby went after her...and that left him with Sam and his ever-curious mind. Dean had never been able to lie very well...either that, or Sam was just incredibly intelligent...so Dean wasn't sure if his younger brother bought it when he said that he doesn't remember a lick of Hell.

Dean's fingertips grip the sides of the sink even harder. Unease settles in the pit of his stomach, and he feels like the floor will give way any second. 

And then his skin starts to pull on itself. 

Screams echo into his chamber. Wailing souls, damned as he was. Bloodied as they were dragged past him, to wherever they came from. And then Alastair would come, or his pitiful lackey Belphegor...and they'd drag him by the hair to the rack.

He scrubs his face with ice cold water, pats it dry, then rips the bathroom door open.

Katherine is standing there, three feet before him, arms limp at her sides. She looks to him, to the kitchen, on shifty feet. Awkward as ever...she's never been this way. 

She blinks at him. "Bobby knows a psychic," she blurts. "She's four hours away. They want to go, but I told them we should stay—"

Dean quickly shakes his head, leaving the darkness of the bathroom behind him. "No, I'm okay to go. Unless you're not...then we're not."

Her fingertips interlock, and the smallest of smiles twitches at her lips. "I'm okay," she quietly says. 

Stepping closer to her, he feigns a smirk, hoping it looks as effortless as it used to come. "You look like a zombie, kid."

"I'll sleep in the car."

Dean sighs, looking around the vacant room. "So where'd they scram off to?" Just a few steps in front of her, he looks down at her, which isn't a great distance. But she's got her chin tilted up and her eyes are huge as she gazes at him.

"Bobby said he'd go fire up the car, and Sam went with him." 

"Well...let's go talk to a psychic."

As much as she would've liked to ride in the Impala with Dean, Katherine couldn't find it in herself to make Sam ride with Bobby...not when he just got his brother back. And she was absolutely not riding in the same car with him until she had to, so yes they had to be in separate vehicles. 

And Dean's stomach became heavy when he saw Katherine and her well-mannered, leashless dog walk right up to the passenger seat of Bobby's car. And anyway, she might sleep a little better if she knew Dean wasn't living and breathing just a couple of feet from her. 

Which was absolutely a lie, because every waking moment since last night has been spent thinking about Dean. There's no getting him out of her head right now.

Sorry, Russ, she says in a sigh. She knows what her thoughts must sound like, how loud and circular they are.

It's okay, he returns. Katherine opens the back door, and he climbs up into the seat, looking very labby and shepherdy at the same time. I'm getting better at tuning you out.

It wasn't meant to be a dig. Sometimes they'd wake each other up with their dreams, so loud it's as if they're pulling the other's ear open and shouting into it. They both had to get good at dragging the divider down, for sanity's sake.

It took all of three seconds of Dean being inside his car for the first time in what felt like years for his joy to sour.

An adapter is plugged into the cigarette lighter, and on the other end of a gooseneck is a little black dock with a plastic cage...holding a silver device not much larger than his Zippo.

Dean blinks at it. At the technology that doesn't belong in his car, his vintage car...it's been sullied.

Sam closes the passenger door behind him with a sigh, then looks over his shoulder towards Bobby's car. He watches Katherine load her dog up, close the door, then get into the passenger side.

"What the fuck is that?"

At the sound of his brother's flat voice, Sam turns to look at him, then follows his hard eyes down to the radio. Er...

He can't help but snort. "It's an iPod."

"You were supposed to take care of her, not douche her up," Dean growls. 

Sam scoffs at that, annoyance flaring in his blood. At Dean's hyperprotectiveness of this stupid hunk of metal. He doesn't know why...no, he knows why it means so much to him, but he doesn't understand it. Dean's attachment to his things. To their father's things, when really, Dean hated the bastard with every fiber of his body. 

"Dean, I thought it was my car."

Dean pulls that mocking face that siblings always do, then sticks the key into the ignition and turns it.

And some fucking...hippie banjo indie yodeling bullshit blares through the speakers. 

Dean's jaw clenches, his nostrils flare, and he looks at Sam, who just blinks at him. And Dean, without so much as blinking—still staring at Sam—rips the iPod jack from the cigarette lighter and tosses it into the back seat.  He points to the passenger floorboard, where the cassettes are always kept, and is surprised to see Sam pull the shoebox up and lift the lid.

"I was half expecting you to have moved that," Dean admits, snatching the box from Sam, and starts to rummage through the cassettes. "I need a palate cleanse."

"I found a Fleetwood Mac one—"

"No."

His fingers flick around until he finds the one that would really, really make him happy. And at risk of being very on-brand for him, unsleeves his own mix of favorite Metallica songs and quickly shoves it into the stereo.

Before Katherine lost her laughter, in the early days, she bought tiny rhinestones and superglue and unknowing to Dean, bedazzled the entire box. Initially, he was pissed. Then it settled into annoyance. But he liked to run his fingers over it while he was driving—the bumps were a fun texture.

Sam sighs, shaking his head, but is unable to help the smile that grows. "It's good to have you back, Dean."

"You have no idea." He shifts the car into gear and pulls out of the parking lot after Bobby.

Dean always wanted to see Metallica live, but they never had the money. 

They made it through track 3 of the B-side—fittingly, Welcome Home (Sanitarium)—and Dean was still running his fingers over the rhinestoned box.

"You know," Dean sighs, reaching to turn the volume down. Sam's eardrums are throbbing. "There's still one thing I can't wrap my head around...it's bothering me." Sam raises a brow at his brother. "The night that I bit it—er, got bit—how did you guys make it out?" Dean pauses. "I thought...I thought Lilith was gonna kill you guys."

"Oh, no, she tried." Sam nods. "She couldn't."

Dean's eyebrows knit together. "What do you mean, she couldn't?"

"She fired this, like...burning light at me...and it didn't leave a scratch." Sam shrugs. "Like I was immune or something."

Dean's head leans forward as he tries to wrap his brain around the imagery of it all. "Immune?" He echoes.

"Yeah," Sam scoffs. "I don't know who was more surprised—her or me." He heaves out a sigh. "She left pretty quickly after that...didn't so much as look at Katherine twice."

He remembers that night very clearly. Katherine was so oblivious to everything around her, kneeling by Dean's body, blood everywhere...he wonders if she remembers any of it. Of the blinding white light, of Lilith...

The others won't be happy with me, she said, but I don't care whose daughter you are. I'm here for one thing tonight.

Dean's voice interrupts his replaying of events. "What about Ruby?"

Without looking at him, Sam shrugs. "Dead," he says. "Or in Hell."

Sam isn't sure if Dean believes him, the way silence hangs in the air like a wet blanket. "So...you been using your freaky ESP stuff?" He must know. Why else would he hammer in on this line of questioning, so pointed and angry?

"No," Sam answers.

Dean gives him a look. The low-eyed look underneath raised brows, the low and dubious, "You sure about that? I mean, now that you've got immunity or whatever the hell...just wondering what other kind of weirdo shit you got going on."

"Nothing, Dean," Sam snaps. But it's like a blade to the heart. Weirdo shit.

Dean always said he loved Sam, that he'd do anything for him...and maybe he would. Jesus, he sold his soul to bring his little brother back to life. He lied about it for a little while, but he did it. That should count for something...but at the moment, Sam can't find a way past his combativeness and hurt. Because even though Dean died for him, sold his soul for him, this is how he really felt.

That his little brother was a freak.

"You didn't want me to go down that road, so I didn't go down that road," Sam continues, throwing his hand towards Dean. "It was practically your dying wish."

He isn't sure why he said the last part: to convince Dean, or to shame himself.

Dean's lips purse, and he nods once, staring out at the two-lane ahead. 

The setting sun glares heinously off of the wet concrete. Bobby's sun visor is nearly not enough, Katherine has pulled her hat over her face, and Russell has buried his in the back seat. While she's come close to sleeping, Katherine Louise's thoughts run in circles and loops, feeding into different circuits, never stopping long enough to feel anything, just to think.

She's thinking about her family's estate...watching it go up into flames. They'd call it a cooking accident, a gas fire. They wouldn't see Lois' throat cut from ear to ear, they wouldn't see the wound in Louise's chest, because everything would be burned.

I haven't talked to Glen since we left the first time, Katherine muses.

But you cut some wood from the tree, like he said, Russell replies. Maybe he just doesn't know what to say. Maybe he doesn't have anything to say that you need to hear.

She supposes either one of those theories could be true. 

Russ?

The dog in the back groans in response. Bobby smiles a little. "Kinda miss havin' a dog around," he admits. 

Underneath her hat, Katherine smiles and crosses her arms the best she can.

I'm not going to pretend to know how all of this is going to shake out, she continues to Russell. But you did say we're going to get a place under your name. 

Humor glimmers from his direction. I did say that. What are you up to?

I'm requesting a farm.

Is that right? What kind of farm?

A dairy one, she decisively says. Because we're not killing cows unless they're dying already.

I can agree to that, he hums. What else?

Can we get ducks instead of chickens?