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Dean sat where Angua had deposited him, staring after Angua's back as she went to rummage for pie ingredients. Sam was still at the bar, still hunched over his glass, shoulders tight and too long hair falling over his ears and into his eyes.

It made him look younger than he was, younger then the new lines around his eyes and mouth betrayed, and Dean's heart twisted a little tighter in his chest.

Sam would be okay here. Somehow, Dean could make that happen, and if not Dean than Jess or Dad or Twerp or any combination of people left on the island that loved him. The only person in the way of that was Sam himself, but Dean would find a way around that, too.

He just had to find a way around whatever it was that stood between them, first.

Sam had arrived on the island spitting words like apocalypse and Lucifer from his mouth, and those scared Dean, but not nearly as much as the look in Sam's eyes when he said them.

Dean sighed, tucking himself further into the booth, watching with an anxiousness barely contained while those around Sam came and went. Occasionally he looked away, out into the jungle beyond the Winchester, to his hands and the small but growing marks on his palms his own fingernails had left behind, but always Dean's focus shifted back to Sam at the bar.

"Fuck," he murmured, twitching helplessly as the long line of uncertain questions restarted themselves in his head. What the hell happened to us?

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Dean took her elbow and sat her down whether she wanted it or not, right there on the steps of the Winchester. "He's okay, but he's - fuck." Dean forgot everything for a moment, lost what little he'd managed to scrape together for a game face, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and concentrated on breathing through it.

"He's from a long time after I got here. He's been through a lot." What he didn't say was that as foreign as Shari might seem to Sam, Dean couldn't help but think Sam saw him in the same, muddled light.

A memory surfaced then, of sitting beside Jimmy in his car as he bent over his steering wheel and cried; of being so close and yet so completely far away from him and utterly helpless. I wasn't used to Jimmy breaking down like that, and I certainly wasn't used to Dean showing any weakness. I think that actually hit me harder than the news about Sam.

"Shit," I sighed, wrapping my arm around his and pressing my face in against his shoulder. "Is it the anti-Christ stuff?"

"I don't know," said Dean, even if he had a hell of an inkling. It wasn't a comfort to learn that despite their father's instructions, he hadn't killed Sam to prevent him ending the world, how could it be? "Maybe. I don't know all of it yet, but things are real bad back home."

"I'm sorry, Dean," I said, because even though Sam being back wasn't a bad thing fundamentally, there was so much upsetting stuff that came with it. I squeezed his arm tighter, and I didn't care that it made me a selfish person, I was glad he was there, on the island, with me. I didn't like imagining him back home in danger, even if it was for the best cause in the world.

"I want to see him, but I also don't. You know?" I couldn't even look over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of Sam inside, despite wanting to desperately. "The last thing he needs is some crazy dead chick he doesn't even know crying all over him, right? I should just leave it alone."

"He needs to believe he's here," said Dean, "and that it isn't all a trick. The more people recognizing him, grounding him..." Dean let a shoulder rise and fall - he couldn't admit that he wasn't sure what his brother needed. "Probably more the better."

He looked over, trying for a smile. "You might dial down the crazy tears, though."

"I'm not making any guarantees," I said, and managed to force a weak smile. I couldn't tell whether Dean's answer was a relief or a burden: Part of me wanted to see Sam again, part of me wanted to stay as far away as possible.

"S'all right," Dean murmured, pushing a lock of loose hair back behind her ear. "Him popping back in like this...he's not the only one who got shook up today. He's a smart kid. He'll figure that out."