onemuseleft

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing/Characters: Gen, Sam and Dean
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for All Hell Breaks Loose
Summary: Jess's death wasn't Sam's first vision, just the first one he recognized.
Disclaimer: They're Kripke's and god bless him. I'm just playing with someone else's toys. This is my first attempt at Supernatural fic, so feel free to critique. Un-beta'd.
Author's Note: For

sidara because I'm not above bribery.

Four in the morning was a time of day Sam didn't see much of anymore, unless he was studying for finals. It had occurred to him on one or more occasion, that finals week was as close to hunting as his lifestyle ever got anymore. Staying out to all hours of the night, existing on coffee and whatever easily consumed foodstuff would get him through the night, researching and studying till his eyes crossed and finally stumbling home to bed at dawn, numb and dumb with fatigue and, on good nights, coming down off the high of getting it all done and done right. Finishing a take-home exam on Bayesian Econometrics wasn't quite as thrilling as taking out a werewolf pack, but it was cleaner. Sam didn't miss the blood or the ichor or any of the other bodily fluids. He could go the rest of his life missing out on the experience of trying to get demonic spooge out of his hair.

But he never quite broke the habit of listening to the night and looking for potential attackers. He'd wanted to, his first year at Stanford, his first year away from the hunt, away from Dad. He'd been as normal as he could possibly get – realizing even as he did that acting normal was always a poor, poor substitute for being normal – but he'd seen too many people die because of their obliviousness to what walked the world alongside them. He hadn't been able to force himself into blindness for long.

And, anyway, the first and for a long time only letter he'd had from Dean had begged him to watch his back, since there wasn't anyone there to do it for him anymore. Sam was stubborn but he wasn't stupid.

But it was almost four in the morning and Sam was cold and tired and thinking of Dean, so maybe that's why he saw what he saw.

It wasn't much of a hike back to his dorm from the library, and at that hour of the night even the night-owls were long asleep. There were no cars – the whole area was a pedestrian zone – and Sam thought yet again of buying a bike. Next year, when he and Jess got a place off-campus, it'd probably cut down on the time he spent getting back and forth from the library.

He was just crossing over to the main quad when he heard something. A voice, maybe. Or the wind. It sounded like a groan or a sigh and instinct made Sam pause before he'd even really registered the sound.

Memorial Church stood to his left, mostly dark and shut down at this hour. Sam cast a quick glance around before heading toward the church.

There were ghost stories connected to the church, of course. Sam had been to enough college campuses in his years hunting to learn one thing: college kids saw ghosts everywhere. Dean blamed it on drugs and all-nighters, and he probably wasn't wrong. Sam had been in this one school a few years back, an all-girls' school in Virginia that had been a former Civil War hospital, and every student on campus had told him a different ghost story, most of them having nothing to do with dead soldiers, which is what they'd been investigating.

But Memorial Church's ghost was supposed to be harmless. Leland Stanford, the son of the people who had founded the university, and the man for whom the church had been dedicated, was said to show up for services every now and then. Sam had never seen him, no one had, of course, not first hand, but he'd been inside the church long enough to know there was nothing dangerous haunting it.

That didn't mean something hadn't started, of course.

Normal people, Sam thought idly as he approached the building, would have assumed it was a drunk student or someone making out. He still had a ways to go, obviously.

The quad was well-lit and the front steps of the Church were empty. Sam climbed them, listening for anything out of the ordinary, but all he could hear was his own footsteps.

The sound came again, from the left, and this time it wasn't so much a sigh as a sharp gasp, a sound of pain. Sam pushed himself up the last couple of steps and froze at the top.

Dean sat against the front doors of the church, his back to the wood, his legs curled beneath him. He looked up at Sam as he stood there, unmoving, and Sam saw a ghost of a smile on his brother's lips. "Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy." It was mostly reflex, and it seemed a nicer way to start the conversation than what the hell are you doing here? He moved closer, and he could see now that Dean was too pale and looked tired. His brother looked older than the last time Sam had seen him, older than a year or two should have made him. "Where's Dad?"

Dean didn't answer him, just grimaced slightly as he sat up, still bracing himself against the door of the church. "Glad I found you. Was afraid…" Whatever Dean was afraid of drifted off unspoken as his brother pressed a hand against his chest and dragged in another of those gasping breaths.

"Are you hurt?" Sam crouched at Dean's side and touched his shoulder, his chest. He tried to move Dean's hand, but his brother ignored him. "Let me see. Dean."

"Nothing to see," Dean said. "I can feel it. How weird is that? I can actually feel it happening." His free hand wrapped around Sam's wrist, fingers resting over his pulse and Dean chuckled. "How about that?"

"What's happening, Dean?" Sam frowned and glanced around again, as if he could have just overlooked their father standing in some corner. "Where's Dad? Is he with you?"

"Not yet. Sammy." Dean's grip on his wrist tightened briefly and he smiled, sad and wistful. "I'm glad I found you. I know you're pissed about this, but it's the better way."

Jesus, Dean had to be drunk or stoned or something. Drugged. Poisoned. Dean had been known to get wasted once or twice, but not to the point that he was unable to look out for himself. And where the hell was Dad? No way Dean wandered all the way to Stanford, poisoned by some monster, without Dad knowing about it.

"Did Dad send you here?" Sam asked, ready to get angry about it, even as he ran through every cure and antidote he knew.

Dean just shook his head and tugged at Sam's hand a little. His grip was weaker than it should be, and Sam realized dully that the reason his brother was leaning against the door was because he wasn't strong enough to hold himself up.

It shook Sam, and he turned his hand in Dean's grasp to grip his brother's wrist in return. "What happened, Dean?"

His brother tipped his head back against the door and regarded Sam with unfocused green eyes. "Best year of my life," Dean told him seriously. "Okay, Sammy? Best year of my life and all the others were well spent. I just." His face crumpled as his body shook and Sam grabbed him. Dean's heart was pounding so hard his entire body shook.

"God." Not good. There was no way that could be good. "Dean, I gotta get you out of here."

"Was afraid I wouldn't find you before it happened," Dean said. "Only a few minutes left. I wasn't really looking at my watch, you know? But I figure it was close to four in the morning by the time I hit the crossroads." He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again he looked sad. "I shouldn't want you here. I'm sorry."

It didn't make any sense to Sam, details of some case Dean and Dad had been working, probably. "Dean, I need to get you somewhere I can patch you up. You're not looking too good."

"Best year of my life, Sammy." Dean's grip on his wrist loosened and went slack. Dean stilled and slumped against the door and his eyes stared out at Sam, green and tired and empty.

"Dean?" Sam touched his brother's face, his throat, pressed a palm against his chest looking for a heartbeat that had stopped altogether. "Dean!" He shook Dean by the shoulders, panic overriding any other emotion as he tried to draw out some reaction. "Damn it, Dean! Answer me!"

He cradled his brother's body against his chest, pressed his cheek against Dean's, still-warm skin against Sam's own. "Dean," he said again, the name slipping past his lips like a guilty secret, part hope and part fear and all prayer. He closed his eyes and dragged in one breath after another and when he opened them, his arms were empty and Dean was gone.

****

He called them, that morning after he snapped out of it and dragged himself back to his room. It was daylight by then – he'd searched the quad and broken into the church, looking for any sign that Dean had really been there. He had a disposable phone, one of the pay as you go types that couldn't be traced to him. He'd bought it more than a year ago, with some vague idea of being able to call Dean without Dad knowing it was him and had just never done it. For one reason or another he kept putting it off and now he realized, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at the phone in his hands, that he hadn't talked to his brother in more than a year.

The phone rang a couple times before someone picked up on the other end and Dean's voice, pissed off and tired was the best thing Sam had ever heard.

"Dean," he said. "What's up?"

"Sammy," his brother answered, a little confused, a little pleased and totally alive.

****

Later, when the visions and the premonitions started, they were different enough from the apparition he'd seen that he didn't connect them. It wasn't until even after that, until he heard the words "one year" and felt the weight of Dean's life pressing against his heart, forcing it to beat well after it should have stopped, that Sam realized what he'd seen.