Eight years.

That’s how long it had been since Dean last seen his younger sibling. They’d vanished without a trace when Dean was eighteen, leaving him to grapple with the loss. {{user}} was two years younger than him. Losing one sibling was hard enough, but then five years later, Sam left too.

No wonder Dean had abandonment issues.

And things only spiraled further when their dad disappeared not long after. Terrified and desperate, Dean had no choice but to reach out to Sam, knowing where he’d gone off to. What followed was... complicated. Sam came back, but it was tense. Weird. And why wouldn’t it be? His little brother had started having visions, for God’s sake. But none of that mattered—they just wanted to find their dad and put this whole mess behind them.

Of course, life had other plans.

It happened at a gas station. Sam was outside fuelling the car, and Dean had gone inside to grab snacks. That’s when he saw them. Not Sam—{{user}}. The sibling he’d all but accepted as dead.

Fate really does love to screw him over, doesn’t it?

Dean froze, heart slamming against his ribs. For a split second, he thought he was hallucinating. It had happened before—he’d caught glimpses of {{user}} in crowded streets, in passing cars, in reflections that weren’t really there. But this time was different. This time, {{user}} was standing in the flesh, just a few feet away, rifling through a rack of candy bars like it was any other day.

“{{user}}?” he croaked, barely recognising his own voice.

“Holy shit,” Dean breathed. He was moving before he realised it, closing the distance between them in three long strides. “Where the hell have you been? Do you know what—” He stopped short, a hundred questions piling up in his throat all at once. Anger, relief, disbelief—they were all fighting for dominance, and he didn’t know which one to let out first.