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Clarity. It’s clarity that settles over Sam as he looks across the water to the trees, standing on the bridge with Dean’s arm around his shoulder.Everything about them becomes remarkably clear.Remnants of his most recent life — Dean Jr. and his mother, Sam’s home where he helped hunters and raised his son — are still relatively fresh, but he can sense details fading, like blurry images on old photographs, dates and times slipping away.The feelings of people, what they meant to him, who they were are strong and likely will remain, but the things that always seemed like a big deal just…don’t anymore.The leaves on the trees shiver in the wind and Sam tips his head back, inhales that distinct scent of fall, grateful to be able to inflate his lungs that much again, happy to still have those senses here, wondering why he thought he wouldn’t.His shoulder no longer twinges when he moves. His joints don’t ache anymore. The pain he’d known for the final few years of his life is gone.It’s refreshing, the physical shifts of crossing over.He tips his head forward just enough for the edges of his hair to fall along his cheek and he can see the color is once again chestnut, like when he was young.Surprise lifts his eyebrows when he notices his clothing and a rush of memory hits him right in the chest and he feels like that kid on that other bridge so long ago, arguing with Dean about the Woman in White and their mother and being raised in the hunting life.Dean.He turns to his left and takes his brother in.It had been too long since he had been in Dean’s orbit, felt that pull, the rightness of them together like this. But at the same time, in the grand scheme of existence, it was but a mere blink of an eye. Here, in this place beyond time, beyond mortality, so many things come together all at once for Sam. Their names may not have always been Sam and Dean, but that’s how Sam recognizes it now. They don’t always speak English. They aren’t always in the United States. They vary in culture, skin-color, gender and sexual orientation. But they are always them. He sees himself forging a sharp tool out of a rock he had found along a creek bed, his dark skinned fingers moving back and forth, sheering the stone into a point, stomach grumbling, but hope in his chest that the implement will help him get some form of meat. The nearby human maintaining the fire is the same one standing next to him now. Dean. In another form. In another lifetime. Sam knows this like he knows the sound of the water below him and the feel of the blue t-shirt on the skin under his coat. With the next blink, he can see in his mind’s eye that there’s snow on the ground and he’s covered in animal skin. He can feel his breasts, heavy with milk, swing while he crunches across the land, his stomach stretching the fur and his mouth forms a smile when the baby’s father brings heated water for them to wash. Dean. He’s got a quick flash of using charcoal on a wall in a cave and he never sees the attack coming. He feels the hit on his head and it all goes black. Dean hadn’t been in that existence at all. They’re forging weapons together next. The two of them, readying for battle, surrounded by other men and Sam remembers Thebes. The army had been powerful because they had been fighting for one another, three hundred strong. He can see now that the couples with them also had the glow of soulmates. He’d been able to kiss Dean openly and touch whenever they wanted, standing literally shoulder to shoulder, masculine muscles gliding together. They died together in battle. A centuries-early Butch and Sundance — the idea makes Sam grin. They’re in a tribe in the desert and he loves Dean, both of them women, by the people’s definition, and they know if they speak of their relationship, they will be killed. The crib in the next shimmery memory is rudimentary at best. Not a lot of room for one, let alone two small children, but there was no other choice. Two cribs wouldn’t work. Sam knows he’s attached to the other child. Physically. They actually share a hip, only two legs between them. Again, it’s Dean. And he can hear Dean’s voice from another time echoing with the suggestion that they were Siamese twins and Sam had had to remind him the term is actually conjoined. No wonder he’d been so adamant. A gunshot flash of powder and iron crack through his mind and he can’t pull up any other details from that, other than mud walls and the smell of rot. The bullet seared straight through Sam’s forehead. He knows Dean pulled the trigger. Given the gift of omniscience and being able to see the big picture allows Sam to recognize the feeling of horror without dwelling on it. Because another memory surfaces of the two of them in a soft mattress made of feathers in some kind of primitive cabin that Sam recalls building himself and Dean has soft curves and gorgeous hair and eyes of the purest blue. They wake together early in the morning and the sun’s rays pick up all the dust and dirt, but Sam knows nothing but the abject joy in his heart. The next memory Sam’s on a boat in the ocean pulling hard on the oars and the people on the shore wish him well. It’s not until this moment that he realizes the man that had been standing just off what passed as a dock was Dean. They never saw each other again in that lifetime. Actual flames at his feet flare in the next blink and he’s tied to a stake in front of a town full of people yelling burn the witch and Dean stands just outside the fire, holding the wooden branch that lit the blaze. Sam remembers the searing of his skin and how his long hair had dragged the flames along to his scalp. He had tried not to scream. His next blink shows a small child at his feet and another in Dean’s arms. Dean’s belly is huge and her brown eyes have the glow of pregnancy. The walls of their modest colonial home are lined with family photos.Sam smiles as his son explains how the game he’d gotten at school was played and the same expression echoes on Dean’s beautiful, feminine face. Another memory flashes and Sam slits the throat of the Native American in front of him with no compunction, but now he knows the man was Dean. That life had been self-righteous, brutal and quick. Not a moment of it to be proud of. The existence when his family had set out across the prairie in the covered wagon, Sam remembers being sixteen and absolutely besotted with the son of the of the guide taking them across the unknown wilderness. The son had been Dean and even though Sam had lived to be sixty in that lifetime, with a wife and four children, he never once forgot the green-eyed boy who had been so skilled with a weapon and sharp on tracking. The speakeasy in Detroit bustles with people. There’s talk of another run for more liquor. Dean’s sitting across from him at a table, leaning over a map, detailing the plan. The spark in those brown eyes never waver, acknowledging without a word how much they were getting away with right under the cops’ noses. No wonder Dean had been so delighted to meet Eliot Ness. There are moments when Sam remembers he had the genitalia of a woman, others when he had the body of a man. As the water ripples in the creek currently beneath, Sam recalls other existences when his identity didn’t match how the people around him defined him and he knows the struggle of truly feeling like other, even in his own skin — and being absolutely unable to speak of it. The flashes of he and Dean become more recent. The Impala. Their father. Standford. The bunker. The fights. The beheadings. The shared motels rooms. The meals sitting across diner tables from one another. The stitching of wounds, clutching one another around an almost or too close or fuck, what would I have done? All the times — every single one — that they were mistaken for a couple, that their relationship made others uncomfortable, that they seemed too close, too unnatural to be brothers — click into place. Two souls living under the human condition that didn’t allow them to be mates is a struggle and despite every time that Sam felt the need to be more, know more, feel more with Dean in their most recent life, he never once acted on the compulsion. He couldn’t. The fear stopped him short every, single time. But he sees now why he wanted it. Wonders if Dean felt the same. It all culminates to right here. Them. Together. Like it was meant to be from the beginning. Two souls never supposed to be apart. All the times they weren’t together or they struggled or they knew pain and sometimes death from each other’s words and hands, Sam realizes it was to get them to this exact point, learning and growing and enriching their belief in who they are. Maybe they were supposed to be brothers in the most recent lifetime. Because here in this plane of existence, it’s as it should be, no judgement, no recriminations, nothing keeping them from one another. Looking into Dean’s green eyes now — and Sam likes the color, glad that this version stayed this time — he can see the same understanding reflected there. Thinks for a split second they probably could have had the whole relationship — physical as well as emotional — in the walls of the Men of Letters Bunker. Instead of getting caught up in the utter pointless what ifs, Sam smiles, uses his voice for the first time to whisper, “Hi.” Dean’s eyes crinkle up, lines starbursting along his temples as his lips climb into a grin and he echoes, “Hi.” It’s absolute and undeniable that they both drift toward one another, brush their lips together and everything in Sam settles. Purity reigns. He exhales against Dean’s skin. Dean pulls back, skims their noses together a few times and asks, “Feel like taking a drive?” Sam bumps their foreheads, knowing with a deep instinct he doesn’t question at all that everything — everything — is as it should be and he counters, “Hanging onto the Impala for a while are we?” And there’s that twinkle in those eyes that is the same regardless of their color or when they existed on earth that Sam will never tire of when Dean says. “Hell yeah we are.” Leave it to Dean to get off on swearing in heaven, nirvana, paradise, whatever this existence is defined as. Sam huffs a laugh and murmurs, “Kind of figured. Remember the horse and buggy?” Dean makes a gagging sound. “I hated that thing.” “I know you did.” And Sam is reminded, once again, of the colorful language his husband had used every time the axle would crack and he’d have to rebuild that delicate wagon. Dean smirks, “Your hair was wild even that time, Samantha.” Palming Dean’s face, nose just under his middle finger, Sam pushes and says, “Shut up, jerk.” Stepping away from the bridge, Dean grumbles, “Get in the car, bitch.” Sliding into the passenger seat of the Impala feels as right as the clouds in the sky and the grass on the ground. Sam inhales and exhales and smiles when the engine roars to life. He glances to his left and sees Dean’s grin. For the first time in this vehicle without a second’s hesitation, Sam shifts his hand to the seat next to him, palm up. Dean doesn’t even attempt to hide his pure delight when he laces their fingers together. It’s like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place so the picture can become clear, like the fizz of a fresh soda bottle being opened, like the second before fireworks burst in the night’s sky, like the first sip of cool water after a long run, like the sensation of free fall at the top of a roller coaster, like the snap of a light clicking off just before crawling under a warm blanket to sleep, like the first bite of a nostalgic homemade meal where the taste is absolute innocence.The physical connection with the other half of his soul lets Sam know he is home. And now, after everything and all of the lifetimes they shared, and even those they didn’t, no matter where the road takes them, it’s perfect.