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A ringtone chimed somewhere in the classroom, loud and bold with a lot of electric guitar, jarring Sam to a halt in the middle of his sentence. It couldn’t have been all that important, though, because he barely remembered what he’d been saying."Shut up," Claire hissed at her phone, digging through her backpack while her ringtone continued its loud solo. "It's alright," Sam told her, as she finally fished the phone out of her bag and the ringtone stopped. He tried not to let his relief show too plainly. "Class ended about ten minutes ago. Sorry, guys." “Have a good weekend, Mr. Winchester!” Kevin said as he left the room. Sam hated to play favorites, but if he had, one of them would most definitely be Kevin Tran. The kid was an absolute prodigy in English, and Sam heard from Eileen that he was picking up sign language faster than all her other students put together. His students filed out of his classroom. Charlie and Jo had an arm around each others' waists, and Sam could only hope that campus security wouldn't detain them or something equally stupid. Sometimes, he wished he'd stayed in California. Then, again...there were good things about South Dakota. He was near Bobby. And he wasn't in California. Jack, who had been in two of Sam's classes last year, gave him an awkward wave, which Sam returned with a smile. He also waved at Adam, who was practically running away from what he considered to be his own personal hell. Sam didn't really understand not liking English, but he could deal with it. It was his job to engage the students, and he was determined to get Adam's writing up to scratch. Sam closed the door as the last student left, and turned to the white board. His breath was a bit shaker than he'd like, as were his hands. Every time he thought he was doing fine, something simple like an electric guitar or a box of lucky charms would set him off again. God. Sam picked up the eraser and began to clean off the white board for the next morning's class. With each swipe, he pretended that he was scrubbing a scar clean from his body, getting rid of a few more reminders of what he had once been. That big line there was that time when a rugaru had gotten a little too close for comfort. The sketchy drawing of a dog was the chunk taken out of his right shoulder when a pissed off spirit had tried to possess him, and Dean had hit the wrong target with an iron poker.No, he wasn’t going to think about Dean right now.Those two shaky l’s in the word ‘parallel’ were his two broken fingers from that night at Stanford. And that mark over there…He couldn’t do this anymore.He didn't realize he was collapsing until he was sitting in his desk chair with his head in his hands. He took a deep breath, brushed his hair back from his forehead. God, Dean had been calling him a girl the last time they’d seen each other, and his hair wasn’t even to his jawline back then. He hated to imagine what Dean would say now, about his soft teaching job and how he hadn’t been on a hunt in fourteen years.Exactly fourteen years. To the day.He’d done a bit of hunting when he first arrived at Stanford, icing a ghost in the chem lab and exorcising a demon from a girl who looked at him with big black eyes. Jess didn’t know about the salt he sprinkled under their bed or the holy water he splashed into her bedside glass every once in a while. Just to make sure that she was with Sam of her own free will.He wondered what was up with her these days. They hadn’t talked in about thirteen years, and looking back, Sam wondered if they had even been that close to begin with. The only reason he’d ever been interested in her was that, when a mutual friend introduced them, the first thing she asked was if she could call him Sammy. His heart had ripped wide open, tearing out the sutures he’d so recently and painfully put in place, and Jess swanned right into the gaping open spot, almost filling it.In a very different way, of course. His girlfriend couldn't exactly be his brother-mother combo or whatever the hell Dean was. She couldn't know his favorite kind of off-off-brand cereal, she couldn't communicate an attack plan with a blink of her eyes, and she couldn't make him feel safe. Not in the way Dean could. Sure, there was the whole physical, romantic element to having a girlfriend. But that wasn't better than having a brother. Different, but not better. Still, she loved him. And he loved her, as much as he could. And for a while, that was enough. By the time Dean came back, he’d tricked himself into believing Jess was all he needed. When Dean tackled him to the ground and called him Tiger, his rock-solid belief came tumbling down in a hail of stones, bruising his heart and his mind anew.Maybe that was why he’d refused to go with Dean.He always told himself that it was only because Dean framed this entire expedition as looking for Dad. Screw the bastard, anyway. Sam couldn’t be dragged from his law school interview to look for the man who had singlehandedly ruined his life. If Dean had come up to him and said, Hey, Sammy. I’ve missed you, Sam would have packed his bags in an instant. Instead, he watched as Dean drove away, the impala’s achingly familiar engine in his ears, tears prickling his eyes.He'd spent a day spacing out in classes, researching I can never go home in the school library during his lunch break. He'd almost convinced himself to borrow Jess' car and drive after Dean when the phone rang. Unknown number. He'd almost bruised a rib throwing himself across the apartment to answer the call. "Dean?"“Your brother’s dead, Sam. Hunter’s funeral tomorrow, Jericho. Come if you can.”And then he’d just hung up, like he hadn’t dropped a bomb that sent Sam’s entire life crumbling around him. He wished that he could pretend it was a mistake, a shifter or a mistaken identity or anything. But Dad would've made sure, though, used every trick in the book, double and triple checked a million times. If he said that Dean was dead, then Dean was dead.Sam had cried all that night, wracking sobs subsiding into silent tears. Jess had tried to sooth him, but after the hundredth time Sam had told her to go away, he’d grabbed his knife from under the pillow and held it up to her throat. That was the beginning of the end for Sam and Jess, but he couldn’t have cared less. His brother, his best friend, his parent, his protector, his everything, was gone.That night, he listened to Dean’s voicemail over and over again until his phone battery died.“This is Herman Munster. Leave a message.”He wished Dean had left a more permanent record of himself in the world. Hell, Sam didn’t even have pictures of him anymore. He'd cried harder just thinking about it, and then even harder thinking about Dean telling him to man up already.A few days later, the impala had shown up in the parking lot. That, and a phone call four years later when Dad had finally ganked that yellow eyed son of a bitch who’d killed Mom, were all the contact Sam and his father had had in fourteen years. Every once in a while, he looked up John Winchester’s name. There had been no death certificate so far.Sitting in the classroom, Sam wiped away the tears running down his cheeks. Fourteen years ago, to the day, he’d lost his brother. He’d lost himself. And it had been his fault, because he hadn’t gone on that stupid hunt and he’d let a goddamn Woman in White kill Dean.He had half a mind to and run off to the first hunt he found, hopefully something really nasty like a vampire den or a poltergeist. Something that would kill him slowly and painfully. Or, on the other hand, maybe he could go for a djinn. Get a little taste of heaven as his life was drained away. That was sounding better and better by the moment.He’d actually reached into his backpack, and was about to pull out his iPad and start in on some research—god, it had been a long time since he’d done research for anything other than dissertations—when the door to his classroom flew open. He quickly wiped his eyes again and brushed his hair over his cheeks to distract from the tear streaks. Winchesters didn’t cry.The girl at the door was tall, braids hanging down to her elbows and her dark skin contrasting with her AC/DC shirt. She was standing confidently, shoulders thrown back, almost at attention. Sam was just seeing Dean in everything today.“Mr. Winchester,” she said, and Sam waited for her to go on, but that seemed to be the end of her sentence.“Yes, Miss…?” He asked awkwardly, slipping his iPad back into his bag. The djinn would have to wait.“Nice place you've got here,” she said, completely ignoring his question. Ignoring all of the perfectly available chairs, she sat down on one of the tables in the front row. “I’m sorry, are you in one of my classes?” He asked. He liked to think he knew his students, but every once in a while one of them would slip under the radar. Besides, she seemed awfully young for a college student. “Yeah, sure, if you say so.” Dawn shrugged. “But that's not what I'm here to talk about.”“I’m sorry, but what is it? This isn’t exactly the best day for me, and if you aren’t in my class I don’t know what we have to discuss.” Sam felt bad the moment the words came out of his mouth. He and his therapist, Cas, were working on it together, but he still hadn’t really gotten the whole anger management thing down.“Woah there, Sammy." She held her hands out towards Sam in a classic steadying gesture.“What did you just call me?" Sam stood up so quickly that he almost kicked over his chair. "Is all that hair messing with your hearing? I swear, just give me five minutes with some clippers." "My hair...what?" "I could swear you used to be the smart one. Did something happen while I was gone? Have you checked this room for hex bags?""What are you talking about?" Sam asked, slamming his hands down on the table. Castiel would say that he was not expressing his anger in a constructive way. Most of his students would've flinched, and then probably called campus security. "Oh man," the girl said, looking around the room, long braids swinging. "You seriously didn't check for hex bags? You're lucky I'm not Dad, or you'd be dead by now.""Tell me who you are," Sam said, pulling Dean's old hunting knife out of his bag and pointing it at the girls throat. "Because if you know who I am, then you know that I can use this. So talk quickly." "Oh yeah, I knew I'd forgotten something," the girl said, slapping her palm to her forehead and rolling her eyes. They were green, Sam noticed with a horrible clenching in his stomach. Bright green. “Sammy, it’s me.”
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Before he was even aware his hands were moving, Sam had flung the entire contents of his thermos on the girl’s face. She didn’t even flinch, just rolled her eyes and spat a thin stream of holy water onto the musty orange carpet. It was almost as if she’d been expecting it.“Seriously, Sammy? We gotta go through that whole checklist right now?” She shrugged, grabbed her backpack, and dumped its entire contents on Sam’s desk. “Alright. We have your garden variety of supernatural tests. Your silver knife,” She picked up the knife and sliced a thin cut into her arm, “Son of a bitch, I forgot how much that hurts. Then there’s your iron,” she picked up an old railroad spike and held in for a minute , “your holy water—although you kinda jumped the gun on that one—and the fact that if I were possessed, I wouldn’t be able to say christo. Anything I missed?”“What is that?” Sam asked, ignoring the question as he saw something that looked suspiciously like his own iPod at the bottom of the pile.“Dude, you can’t douche up my Baby just because I’ve been gone.”“You…I mean, Dean’s been gone for fourteen years. I’m pretty sure Baby’s my car now.”“Hey!” The girl barked, and Sam noticed for the first time how she was pitching her voice lower than its natural timbre. Probably trying to seem tough. Just like Dean had. There really were an unbelievable number of similarities between her and Dean. Of course they were probably only in Sam's head. “Only I get to call her Baby.”Yeah, no. She was pretty much exactly like Dean. “This can’t be happening.” Sam blinked his eyes as hard as he could, squeezing them shut and hoping that when he opened them they would stop playing tricks on him and he’d be alone again. “I was just missing Dean so much that I had a schizophrenic break. And even if you aren’t any kind of creature, monsters can be human too. I bet you just thought you’d play a trick on the new teacher, huh?” Sam was infuriated to feel a tear rolling its way down his cheek. He swiped at it roughly.“Sammy, you know I wouldn’t…” the girl began, and for just a moment he could almost imagine that her voice was Dean’s.“Stop!” Sam roared, his eyes flying open. “Stop torturing me like this! If you want to kill me, fine. Get on with it. Just don’t pretend to be him.”“Nobody’s pretending anything, Sam. I don’t know how it happened, but when I—when this body turned fourteen I remembered everything. Still can’t believe I was iced by a freakin’ La Llorona. All I know is some weird-ass guy in a trench coat said that he got to my soul or whatever before the Reapers did, but by the time he could shove me back in my body it was already burned up. Guess the best he could do was find the nearest chick and put me in there. I’m tellin’ you man, being a girl is a freaking nightmare. No clue why they’re called the weaker sex. At least I’m smoking hot, though.” She surveyed her own chest with pride.“So you’re telling me that you are my brother, Dean Winchester, in the body of a teenage girl because a guy in a trench coat wasn’t quick enough?” Sam asked flatly, trying to let the absolute idiocy of the situation become clear.“I knew you’d catch on eventually. I’m telling you, all that hair must be blocking your brainwaves or something. I’d tell you that you look like a chick, but because I look even more like a chick right now I’ll give you a pass.” The girl (Sam refused to call her Dean) picked up a strand of her elbow-length hair between her fingers as if she was afraid it might burn her. “The moment I get me a some clippers, all this is coming off.”“How did you let it get so long in the first place?” Sam asked, and then reprimanded himself for showing curiosity. He couldn’t let himself get sucked into this girl’s game.“My parents won’t let me cut it,” she mumbled, a blush barely visible on her dark skin. “And don’t you dare make any comment on that, Sasquatch.”“Hey, if you can make a comment on my hair, then I can certainly…” Sam trailed off, regaining his senses. He absolutely would not be exchanging brotherly banter with this stranger. Even if she did make him feel more at home than he had in twelve apartments and fourteen years.“Okay,” Sam began again. “Let’s say you really are Dean, dumped into some other body. Can you prove it?”“Ask me anything,” The girl responded, hopping of the table and leaning casually against his desk. “I’ve been brushing up for a quiz.”“What happened on November 2nd?” Sam asked, planting his hands on the desk and leaning towards her like a lawyer in a bad procedural. He immediately felt self-conscious and leaned back.“That was the day that some son of a bitch burned our Mom right in front of you. Dad put you in my arms and told me to run.” Her eyes have misted over, partly in recollection and partly with unshed tears. “That’s when I knew we’d always have to stick together.”“Your acting skills are very good, I’ll give you that. You almost made me believe you for a second. How did you know about Azazel?” Sam was slamming shut every barrier he’d ever put up, building the quickest wall around his heart he’d ever made. This all hurt too much.“Az-what?”“Come on, you know. The yellow-eyed demon who killed mom.”“Wait, you’re telling me you know what killed Mom? And you're teaching English at a Community College instead of killing the son of a bitch?” The girl said angrily.“He's already dead.”“It’s dead?” The girl asked, eyes round in shock.“Don’t act like you don’t already know all this. You must've come across it during all that research on me.”“Come on, Sammy. You gotta have a little faith in me. I know things between us were a little rough around the edges towards the end, but you just gotta remember that I would never hurt you like this unless I had a damn good reason.”“What was the last thing you ever said to me?” Sam asked, desperately trying to rationalize the entire situation into some simple explanation. How had she known exactly what Dean would say? Was she a psychic, pulling the words Sam longed to hear straight from his own mind? Had he actually found the Djinn, and something in his perfect universe had gotten seriously messed-up?“Oh, don’t make me repeat that entire speech. Give a guy a break, will ya?” Dean—no, not Dean, what was he thinking?—asked, scratching her head. “If you insist. Come on, Sammy. You gotta…”“No, moron. That wasn’t what I was talking about.” Sam put on his best bitchface, and when the girl saw it her smile almost lit up the room. Sam quickly relaxed his face into a neutral expression. “ What was the last thing Dean ever said to me before he died.”“Oh, yeah, that.” The girl looked just innocent enough that he knew she’d known what he meant the first time around. “I said Sammy, I love you man, but you can be a major dick sometimes.”“You could’ve found a recording of that phone call in some database. That doesn’t prove anything.” Sam found himself edging away from her as she moved towards him. He'd run into the whiteboard soon, and then there would be nowhere to else go. “Ask me something else. Anything.” Her green eyes burned with an intensity he’d only seen on Dean’s face during a dangerous hunt.“What were our hunting aliases?”“Something rock n’ roll, usually, although you have been known to use Star Wars.”“Who was your childhood best friend?”“No question. It was you, Sammy.”“How do you kill a vampire? Silver bullets, or stake through the heart?”“Neither. You cut off the head."“What was your first hunt?”“Ghoul, operating out of Askarben, Nebraska. Left you alone in an apartment in Bellevue, called whenever Dad stopped for gas to make sure you were okay. Ganked the fucker myself so I could get home.”“What is your biggest regret?” The words were out of Sam’s mouth before he could stop them, and they hung in the air between him and the girl like lead balloons. She took a deep breath, stopping her advance towards him.“I never told you this, so I can’t see how it would help,” She said warily.“Just…tell me, please,” Sam begged, all restraint and manliness and the fact that Winchesters never show their feelings gone. “I need to know.”“Don’t make me say this.”“Don’t make me beg.”“Alright. My biggest regret...was not saying yes." She took a deep breath. "You asked me to come with you, to Stanford and I said no. I put you on that bus and I walked away. I'll never forgive myself for that." "I didn't expect you to say yes,” Sam said. The girl smiled, the same self-satisfied smile that Dean used to wear when he glued Sam's had to his face, and Sam realized he'd just made a huge error. “So you admit it!”“Admit what? I don’t admit anything!” Sam said quickly, backing away from her.“You know you believe me, Sammy,” She said, advancing on him even quicker now. Sam ran into the whiteboard, and she pinned his knife arm to its surface.“Believe what?” Sam asked, frantically trying to wrench his arm away, but her grip was unbreakable. Maybe he could've gotten away at the height of his hunting career, but years of jogging and yoga had left his fighting muscles in deplorable condition.“When Dad would leave us alone with Baby, we’d go out and park her in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes I’d let you drive, even when you were just a kid. And if it was clear, we’d sit on the hood and watch the stars. You’d fall asleep up there, and I’d have to lug you into the back seat and we’d just spend the night there. Dad was usually too drunk to even notice we'd left.”All Sam could see were green eyes, and all he could hear was that familiar voice.“You’ve got to believe me!” He heard the shout, and the sound of a hand banging on the whiteboard next to his head. “Come on, Sammy.”“I…” Sam couldn’t speak, and even if he could, he had no idea what he wanted to say. And then the voice came again.“Bitch.”And automatically, he responded. “Jerk.”He looked into the girl's eyes, trying to organize everything she'd told him like Dad had taught him, trying to find any inconsistencies. But the red tape crisscrossed his mental cork board, and nothing stood out. Nothing that he could call upon as proof that this girl wasn’t who she said she was. No straws to grasp at to keep him from realizing the absolute, inevitable truth. After all, if demons were real, who was to say that weird trench coated saviors weren’t?“Dean?” He breathed, and heard the girl—his brother, his Dean—let out a sigh of relief.“Hiya, Sammy. It’s about time.”
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Alright, so maybe I wasn’t completely honest with Sammy. That whole thing about trench coat guy getting to me before the reapers? Complete bull. They got to me all right—or should I say, she got to me. Some chick called Billie or something.Anyway, by the time trench coat guy got me out of there (don’t ask me how, I blacked out halfway up) I’d been in Hell for 3 days topside. Math has never been my strong suit, but that works out to about a year of torture. A year of being hung on the rack by hooks through my hands, hellhounds ripping me apart, Alastor having his sicko way with me whenever he felt like it, constant mirages of Sam telling me all my worst faults. Fun times.Fun times that Sammy definitely doesn’t need to know about.Why Hell? I had a lot of time to think about that while I was on the rack, but I came to the obvious conclusion within the first month. With the number of times I've screwed up in my life, I'm surprised the torture wasn't worse. Anyway, I’m back up here now, thanks to trench coat guy. We didn’t really get a good chance to chat before he dumped me in this body. All he said was, “Hello, Dean Winchester. My name is Casti-whatever,” in this weird voice that sounded like he'd swallowed a truck of gravel. And then I was a 3 day old baby, so I didn’t have that much of a chance to respond.I think I’d like to see him again, sometime. Maybe say thanks.Because here I am, looking Sammy right in the eye for the first time in fourteen years, and my heart is damn near bursting.“Dean…I just, I thought, I…” he’s babbling, he has been for a while now, and I decide to take pity on him.“Sammy. When, in our entire lives, have things worked out like we thought they would?”“Well, yeah, but this is a new kind of messed up. I mean, it’s you, but you’re in there.” He gestures vaguely to my general body.“Yeah, I’m short. And I’m hot. So what? Aren’t you always saying crap like ‘it’s the soul that counts’ or has that changed while I’ve been away?”There I go again, making up shit so we don’t have to get into a heart-to-heart in a freakin’ private school classroom. Or, you know, ever. It’s the tried and true Winchester coping technique: never, ever, talk about your real feelings. It doesn’t usually work, but it never hurts to try. Especially because being a chick apparently makes the waterworks much easier.“No, that hasn’t changed. But, Dean, you’re a freaking girl!” He takes a handful of his stupidly long hair and tugs at it. I hold up my hand to pause his end of the conversation. “Wait a minute. I’m having a kindergarten flashback right now.” I pretend to recall faceless people in a nameless state yelling Dean, you’re a freaking girl. Sam laughs. Something in my chest breaks open. Then I lower my hand. “Okay, continue.”“You never went to kindergarten, Dean.” He shoots me a bitchface, the why can’t you just be normal for once, Dean number. I have to keep myself from smiling, because he keeps calling me Dean. He’s accepted that inside of this body, I’m still me.“So, what’s up with you, Sammy? I tried to pull records on you, but you’ve always been good at covering your tracks. You still with that Smurf girl? Tess something?”“You mean Jess?”“That’s the one. She was pretty hot.” I do my best leer, which is hopefully still good because I’m a bit out of leering practice.“Gross, dude. I can’t believe I’m seeing a teenager make that face.” I grin at him, and then leer again. “Whatever. And about Jess, we broke up the year after you…” His face crumples and he sinks to the floor like a headless vamp, hiding his head in his hands. I kneel beside him, and with him sitting and me on my knees we’re almost the same height.“I’m sorry,” he says, with a choked off sob that makes me want to sob too. Seriously, I’m going soft. “I just can’t believe you’re back.”"I'm back. I came as soon as I could." Another bald faced lie. I remembered him a full year ago, and when I tried to get out of the house and see Sam my ‘dad’ basically grounded me for life. He and ‘mom’ were out today, that’s the only reason I got away. That and I slipped Dad’s right hand man, Metatron (still don’t know his first name), a bit of cash so he wouldn’t report my leaving right away. Someday, I promise, I’m gonna come clean with all this. But not right now. It would complicate already complicated things unnecessarily. Like, it would make things almost as complicated as that last sentence.“That was a really good Dean impression,” he says, raising his head from his hands. He obviously isn’t ready to talk about the though stuff, either. “I mean, I know you are Dean,” He admits it! Full stop, no prompting! “But that voice was really good.”“Sorry, Sammy,” I say as gruffly as I can. “I may have a bit of a higher pitch right now, but that only means that I can improve my already amazing Sam Winchester impersonation.”“I know I’m going to regret this,” he sighs, “but what is it?”I grin, just to let him know he’s in trouble, and then switch to a register a bit above my normal Alto, which I’m trying so hand to lower. Hey, I’m in a girl’s body and I’ve been to singing classes. Deal with it.“So get this!” I say, with my best Sammy inflection.“Oh, god, Dean.” He covers his face again, but this time not because of tears. I count that as an improvement. “I do not sound like that.”“I do not sound like that,” I parrot back.“Dude, no.”“Dude, yes,” I say, still in my Sammy voice.“God, I’ve missed you.”“I’ve missed you too,” I say, back in my best Dean impression. Dean from before I was shoved in here and decided to make the best of it. I hope I’m not hurting my voice too much, because I can sing Zepplin better than ever with all those vocal lessons.Sasquatch lurches forwards and traps me in a big hug. I don’t even try to escape with a manly pat on the back, just let him cling on for as long as he wants. And I’d be lying, again, if I say that I’m not maybe clinging just a little bit too.
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Sam still had to clean up the classroom, and Dean hadn't eaten all day. So the they promised to meet up in frond of Baby, and Dean had walked out the door, braids swinging. Then Sam was alone.Sam took more time than was absolutely necessary to gather up his papers. He finished erasing the whiteboard, paying much less attention to the process than before. He organized the papers in his briefcase. And the entire time, his mind worked as it hadn’t in years.For years, he’d thought that his last shred of happiness had been burnt up along with Dean’s body. As his freckles were swallowed by flames, Sam had resigned himself tearlessly to his new life. A life with no family, no big brother to make all the bad things go away. All alone.And now, after living that life for fourteen long years, here she was. Or he. His brother, Dean, in the body of an adolescent female. And this half-life of his, teaching and staying just outside the periphery of the hunting community, it could all melt away. He could have his brother back again.Nothing ever went this right in Sam’s life.Sam slung his briefcase’s carry strap (and wouldn’t Dean just love that) over his right shoulder and started off down the hallway, heading purposefully towards the front door and the car. And, just maybe, Dean. As he sped around various corners in the hallway, which was much longer than he’d ever remembered, he tried not to panic. What if Dean—or whoever—wasn’t there when he got outside? What if this wall some kind of hallucination brought on by lack of sleep? What if there was a monster or a camera crew waiting outside, and this was all some kind of horrible prank? But as he neared the sliding glass doors at the front of the building, he could see Dean leaning nonchalantly against a lamppost just far enough away from the Impala to be inconspicuous. That warm, fuzzy, unfamiliar feeling surged back up in Sam’s chest just seeing him.“Toss me the keys, Sammy,” Dean called out as soon as he was close enough.“Why?” Sam asked stupidly.“Because I don’t want to pick the lock on the Impala again. What kind of a stupid question…” Dean trailed off, rolled his eyes and slid into the driver's seat. “What do you think you’re doing?” Sam asked, noticing that Dean had not only unlocked the car, but had slid into the driver’s seat and was in the process of adjusting the bench seat to fit his shortened legs.“Driving,” was Dean’s gruff response. Or, at least, as gruff as he could make his high voice.“You can’t drive. You’re fourteen.”“Not what it says on my license.” Dean flicked open a leather wallet, far more distressed than a new one should have been, and showed Sam a State of California driver’s license. The name was Joanna Dean.“Good fake, Dean. Very inventive. Now why don’t you let me drive?”“Just because your legs are too long doesn’t mean that I’m gonna pass up my first chance in a decade to drive my Baby.” Dean lovingly caressed the wheel of the car and reached into the glove compartment for one of the cassette taps that Sam could never bring himself to throw out. “But y’know what?” He continued magnanimously, “I’ll going to let you drive when I get tired.”“Tired? Just how far do you think we’re going?” Sam sat in the passenger seat, knees almost up to his ears. “You’re not the only one who can do research, Sammy. I’ve done some poking around of my own, and I know that the son of a bitch ghost who killed me is still out there. We’re going to Jericho, and we’re finally gonna ice her ass.”Sam wanted to argue. He wanted to say how absolutely idiotic this idea was, but then he’d be ignoring the fact that he’d almost done the same thing almost too many times to count. The idea of killing the thing that had taken away his brother was almost too tempting to resist. The only thing that had stopped him was that this is how his dad had become the way he was, a man who lived for nothing but revenge.However, now everything was different. Now, Dean was by his side, and the revenge part of the equation was almost moot. How could you avenge the death of someone who was still alive? And Dean wanted to ice the SOB. So ice the SOB he would.“Okay.”“Okay?” Dean asked, disbelievingly, as he put the car in drive.“Okay,” Sam said. “Just let me call my therapist and reschedule.”“Therapist?” Dean asked with a snort. “Seriously?”“Well, Dean, some of us developed chronic depression after we lost our brother.” For a second, Sam was afraid he’d gone too far, and Dean would pull over the car and make him get out. For blaming him for something he had no control over. But Dean just shrugged.“Fair point. Just call him on our way.”Sam pulled out his cell and dialed Helping Angels clinic's familiar number.“This is the voicemail of Castiel Novak. Make your voice a mail.”“Hey, Cas, it’s Sam. I’ve gotta cancel today’s appointment. I’ll pay the fee, I’m sorry. Tell Claire good job on her essay, by the way. Don't bother calling back, I'll see you next week." Sam flipped his phone closed, and looked over at Dean. "Done."“So you have a therapist now?” Dean asked overly casually.“Yeah, I’ve been seeing Castiel for years now.”“Castiel?” Dean repeated thoughtfully. “I think I might want to meet this guy.”“Okay,” Sam said, caught off guard. "I guess you can, if you want. You should also go see Bobby." "Bobby!" Dean's eyes lit up. "He's still around?""Yeah," Sam said. "He misses you." "Well, we'll drop by his place on our way back. But for now, let’s go gank this Woman in White.”"Yeah," Sam said. His brother may be in the body of a teenage girl, and he may be in therapy, and it may have been fourteen years. But he and Dean were driving in Baby, and that was all he'd ever wanted. "We've got work to do."