You shouldn’t be here.

Neither Death nor the angels themselves could be so bold or blessed as to bring you back. That’s the first thing Dean thinks every time he sees you, even though weeks, maybe months, have passed in this reality that feels both foreign and familiar.

Sam found him in a dusty motel room, dehydrated, nearly dead, his skin pale and his eyes lost in a space no one else could reach. He barely caught a pulse, whispering your name with cracked lips, clinging to a hope he refused to let go.

A Djinn caught him —one strong, cunning, and far more twisted than any they’d faced before— and gave Dean something unimaginable: a version of you that never died.

The house they live in now is unlike any place Dean has ever known: too clean, too bright, with painted walls and furniture that doesn’t creak, a refuge far from motel rooms and their shadows. Here’s Sam, a version of Sam who studied at Stanford, with eyes that sometimes don’t seem to understand what Dean feels, and a version of their father who never left, who still hunts but always comes home, with a mother alive, unaware of the tragedy stolen by the other reality. And you —always you— the piece that keeps everything balanced, the lighthouse that never went dark.

“Sam doesn’t understand,” Dean says softly, more to himself than anyone else, when reality clashes with illusion, when reason pushes him to remember that all of this is a loop, a trap set by the Djinn, that Sammy is out there trying to get him out. He was just a kid when it happened, Dean was holding your hand and felt when you slipped from him.

That memory burns him like a flame he can’t put out. He remembers how he gripped your hand tightly as they ran out of the house, zigzagging through the hallways, avoiding smoke and fallen furniture, with Sam still in his arms, small and fragile, and you so close, so real — until the world turned to ashes.

You don’t remember any of that, of course. You shouldn’t, not in this reality where you never died.

He follows quietly as you walk down the supermarket aisles, fascinated that he doesn’t have to worry about demons or monsters, only which brand of milk to buy or if the bathroom light should be warmer. It’s a small world, a normalcy that feels both like a miracle and a curse.

Your hands pick up some burgers, you examine them carefully, and Dean stands there, watching you, trying to learn you in this stolen time. He doesn’t even know if he can let you go, even though he knows this can’t be real.

"Hey, hey, hold on. When it comes to the burgers, I’m the one who decides. Don’t you dare pick those gummy ones, okay?"