Nim watched, her faint smile fading into silent concern as he pushed off the car, moving to fall into step a little way behind him. To her, one part of this cemetary was pretty much like another, but she could see that this part, this place, held some difficult memories for him. All she could do was be there, a silent witness to his attempt to reconcile what he knew with what lay beneath the earth at his feet.

That was part of the problem really. No one lay beneath the earth at his feet. There was no marker or gravestone to mark where it had happened. No bodies to bury, no grave to visit that marked where he and Sam had been laid to rest, no place to lay flowers or kneel in prayer. Bobby had given them a hunters' funeral, burning their remains and casting their ashes on the wind, no bones to salt and burn, nothing left of them at all but memories and a few worthless mementos to remember them by.

Dean took that short march slowly, almost as if was dreading it, coming to a halt finally in front of a small field where only a few lonely gravestones stood as witnesses to what had taken place there. "This is where it happened," he told her. There was nothing to mark the place; maybe there never had been.

Stepping closer behind him, Nim slid a hand from her pocket, resting her palm against his back as he came to a halt. There was nothing to say, nothing she could say to help these moments pass more easily. Her silence was open, inviting him to speak if he needed to but not trying to force words from him he wasn't ready to share. She'd never felt so helpless in the years she could remember, hating the uselessness in her reluctance to break into his silence.

Almost three years had healed the earth and whatever damage had been done here, but those years hadn't yet healed the pain in his heart from the memory of that day. "I understand now why Sammy did what he did," he told her. He'd had a lot of time to think about things since then, and he'd forgiven his brother a long time ago. "He was the hero, not me. He was trying to keep me out of it, to keep me safe, to keep me from getting killed."

He closed his eyes as a particular memory washed over him, playing itself out before his mind's eye. A violent argument which ended in a beatdown, Sam's hands around Dean's throat, and Dean's eventual warning: "If you walk out that door, don't you ever come back." Dean hadn't understood it then, but he did now. He understood that Sam had done it on purpose, so that Dean wouldn't follow, so that Dean wouldn't try to stop him from saying yes to Lucifer and sacrificing himself to save the world.

"I didn't want him to do it, to say yes. I wanted to find another way, but..." Dean broke off a moment, feeling that same old familiar feeling of despair he'd felt so many times before. "He was right. There was no other way. Why it went down different here, I don't know. I don't know why I said yes, but I know why I died."

The question had to be asked; he had to say it out loud. Even Nim knew that, with her fractured and broken memory. Her hand smoothed over his back as she bit her lip lightly, drawing in just enough quiet courage to speak. "Why?" she asked softly. "Why did you die?"

He was reluctant to reply, reluctant to answer her question, knowing she wouldn't like the answer, but there was no screwing the top back on the can of worms now. She had asked, and he had promised himself to never lie to her. "I died because I didn't want to go on without him."

He wasn't sure if it was the truth, but it felt true in his heart. He didn't need anyone to tell him; he just knew. Was it him who'd let that happen, some aspect of himself that had lived in this place, or was it another Dean all together" Did it even matter"

"What was he like?" Perhaps it was an odd question to ask, from the many that could have been voiced in these moments, but it was the one that rose foremost to her mind. Nim had no recollection of Sam but what she had been told of him. But she knew he must have been something very special indeed, to garner such deep, unquestioning loyalty from his brother.

Of all the questions she could have asked, that one was the most unexpected and the one that produced the greatest ache in his heart. "What was he like?" Dean echoed, opening his eyes and staring out at nothing. How did you sum up your brother, your best friend, in twenty words or less"

"He was....tall." He cracked a small, sad smile at the thought of that. "Freakishly tall, really. But gentle, I guess. He liked dogs. Always wanted one. He had one once, but..." Dean shrugged his shoulders, indicating without saying so that it hadn't lasted. "He wanted to be a lawyer." But these were unimportant things that told her little of who Sam really was. He chewed at his lip as he tried to dig deeper.

She smiled gently at this first recollection as it came to his mind, easing her hand from his back to draw his from his pocket, sliding their fingers together in a gentle squeeze of solidarity. "I'm sorry, that's a really hard question to answer, isn't it?" she said softly, covering the back of his hand with her other palm, enclosing his fingers in her grasp. "You don't need to tell me. Not right now."

It was the touch that did it, that broke his carefully-controlled composure, and he turned his head toward her, the expression on his face changing, barely contained emotions dangerously close to the surface. "Why am I here, Nim?" He asked, his voice breaking. He'd asked the question before, though not necessarily of her. "I promised Dad I'd always take care of Sam, and I failed. I failed him here, I failed him there. He wasn't supposed to die. It wasn't supposed to happen this way."

"You can't know that," she said quietly, leaning into his side as she looked up at him, dark eyes meeting hazel-green in gentle encouragement. She knew this was hard for him, but equally she knew that he had to do it. "I don't know how to help you see this. You can't second-guess what?s already happened, or blame yourself for something that you didn't do. It wasn't you who died here. And until we know for certain what?s happened, you can't even think of taking on that burden of guilt. It'll tear you apart."

"Don't you understand?" he asked, hearing her words, but not really listening. "I was supposed to protect him, not kill him. Even after what Dad told me. Even after....after everything that happened. Even after he said yes to Lucifer. It was supposed to be me. I was the one who went to Hell. I was the one who started it all. I was the one who was supposed to finish it, not him. It should have been me. That's why I died here, because I couldn't go on without him, and now....I don't know why I'm here. I don't know what?s going on back home. All I know is if I stay here, I'm never gonna see him again, and if I go back, I lose you."

He took a deep breath, his chest aching as he struggled to keep his emotions at bay, his throat closing with unshed tears of grief and loss and confusion. "Don't make me choose. I don't want to choose," he pleaded, turning away and fighting for control.

Just listening to him struggle through the pain, the conflicting wish to stay and willingness to leave, hearing the way his voice tightened and strained ....it was heartbreaking for her. She had no idea how she could help him, if he even wanted her to try, and in the midst of that sense of helplessness came the very real pain that spread through her own chest at the quiet understanding that if he did have to make that choice, she would step aside to make it easier for him. Her own throat closed, her fingers tightening on his as silent tears started to trickle down her own cheeks, hating herself for intruding on his grief with her own innermost fear.

Rolling her eyes at the idiot who passed them by as Dean drew them to a halt, Nim waited until the Impala had come to a full stop before moving. She shifted beside him on the bench seat, her hands rising to gently unloop the amulet from where it hung from the rearview mirror, twisting to face him. She loosened the leather thong, carefully lowering it over his head until the charm hung where his brother had intended it to be, laying her hand over the charm against his collarbone as her eyes met his. "He wanted you to wear it," she reminded him quietly. "So long as you do that, you don't need to say goodbye. Not completely."

Distracted by the rude driver for only a moment, Dean turned back to Nimue to find her slipping the amulet from around the mirror and sliding over to loop it over his head. He watched her silently while she laid the amulet to rest against his chest, feeling the familiar weight of it hanging from his neck. It was heavy and made of brass bearing the face of some sort of mythological creature. In the beginning, Dean had just thought it to be some sort of good luck charm, but it later became clear that it was much more than that, much more than anyone could have ever guessed. Despite discarding it in his own world, Dean found it ironic that it had somehow found its way back to him in this one. He watched as she laid her own hand over the charm and met his gaze, unsure that to say in response to that. "He gave it to me because he thought Dad didn't deserve it."

"So' He gave it to you, Dean." Nim's eyes were serious, needing him to stop comparing himself to his father, to stop second-guessing decisions that had been made in the past. "He gave this to you. He could have given it back to Bobby, or kept it for himself. Most kids would have done. But Sam gave it to his big brother, who did deserve it, in his eyes. Are you really going to throw that gift away?"

"I did once," he admitted sourly. He'd lived to regret that decision, done on a whim, wishing he'd had it back after Sam had gone to Hell, wishing to have something to remember him by. Odd how things worked out. The damned thing was hanging around his neck like it had always been there. He'd been wearing it since he was twelve. He titled his head forward, sliding the amulet into the palm of his hand to take a better look at it. He had the thing memorized, and it looked no different than the one he'd thrown away. As far as he could tell, it was an exact duplicate, just like himself, perhaps.

"Looks like it's not just you and me who gets a second chance here, then," she murmured softly, drawing her hand away from the amulet charm as his attention fell to it, sitting back to watch him with quiet intensity. Nim couldn't have said why it was so important to her for Dean to wear the amulet again, only that it was. So long as he had it with him, she was certain that Sam would never be too far away. She just wished she could remember the brother who'd meant so much to the man her life seemed made to revolve around.

"It's supposed to burn hot in God's presence or some crap," he remarked, almost offhandedly, not really believing it. He'd told Sam it was worthless before he'd tossed it in the trash. He'd been feeling hopeless then, full of despair. He wondered how the amulet had come to be in Bobby's possession. Had the Dean that had lived in this world not thrown it away, or had someone rescued it from the trash bin"

"Which god?" It was an innocent enough question. Nim didn't have a particular faith, and thus she didn't consider the word 'god' to pertain to any one deity. She had no idea if the Jo she had been was devout in any way, but it seemed foolish to dedicate belief to a single god when most hunters knew for a fact there were others out there.

"Which..." Dean partly echoed her question, brows furrowing as he lifted his head, fingers wrapping around the amulet that now hung from his neck. "God God, I guess," he continued. "The Creator. The Father of All. Yahweh?" He sighed, wondering if he sounded crazy. "You're not going to believe this, but I've been to Heaven. I've....seen things I can't explain, but I'm still not sure I believe in God. The Biblical God, I guess. I really don't know."

"Dean, we haven't come up against anything you've said that I haven't believed yet," she pointed out with a faint smirk. There was a pause as she considered what he was and wasn't saying, finally drawing in long deep breath and releasing it slowly. "Look, I don't know if I believe in any kind of god. I mean I know they exist, that kinda cancels out the need to believe in them in the first place. We've met Aphrodite, and she's supposed to be a goddess, right' Maybe the amulet burns for a specific god, just ....not the one you wanted it to."

She shrugged lightly, curling her own fingers around his hand where it lay wrapped about the charm itself. "Whether it has any powers or not doesn't matter, Dean. You wearing this amulet is about you being close to Sam. It doesn't need freaky fireworks to be important to you."

He frowned thoughtfully, knowing in his heart she was right. "Where were you when I threw it away?" he asked, sadly, knowing it had probably hurt Sam to see him do that. But at the time, Dean hadn't really cared. And where was Jo during all that' She was already dead, already taken from him.

She bit her lip, feeling the sudden pall of sadness and regret that hung over him. Her other hand lifted, cupping his cheek in her palm in that specific way, that tender touch that always seemed to move him deeply. She didn't know the truthful answer to his question, assuming in the blank burn of her lost memory that he had thrown the amulet away after he'd lost his connection to Jo. "I was here," she said softly. "Waiting for you."

There were no tears - he was all cried out - a dull ache throbbing in his temple, the result of all those tears, but that ache was nothing compared to the ache in his heart. And yet, here was Jo, back from the dead, reaching out to comfort and console him, to try and heal the pain in his heart and fill the empty space that had been left by Sam's death. He opened his heart to her in that moment, ignoring the fear and the trepidation, the nagging worry that all of this was only temporary and would be taken away from him at any given moment, just like it had before.

"Nim..." he said, his voice cracking as he whispered her name. He knew she spoke the truth, at least, as far as she understood it. It didn't matter what the amulet was for or what it was supposed to do; what mattered was that it had been given to him by his brother and stood as a symbol of an everlasting connection that transcended death. He reached for her for the second time that day, needing to hold her or be held by her, needing some form of physical connection to another human being so he knew he wasn't alone. "Thank you."

The Impala didn't exactly offer a whole lot of room for the kind of embrace he needed in that moment, but Nim was stubborn enough to find some truly awkward positions in which to give Dean what he needed. She rose onto one knee, curling her arms about his head as he leaned into her, bent uncomfortably over him thanks to the low roof, and didn't even offer a suggestion toward a complaint. Her lips brushed his hair as she smiled gently, relieved that he wasn't going to deny himself this connection to his brother out of some misplaced pride. "Anytime," she murmured, her voice soft and warm as her fingertips stroked against his neck.

It seemed to him that this simple thank you was sadly insufficient, and yet, it took everything he had just to say those two simple words, a thank you from Dean as rare as three other little words that were so hard for him to say. Three little words that were slowly becoming easier. The worst of the visit to his past over - or so he thought - Dean leaned back and smiled, like the sun shining through the clouds on a stormy day, ready to move on to the next bit of business, which she would most likely not find too surprising. "You hungry' I'm starving."

She laughed, dropping back onto the seat beside him with a faintly incredulous look on her face. "Can you go more than an hour without needing food?" she chuckled playfully, patting his thigh fondly. "C'mon, princess, let's pack your mouth with something deeply bad for your cholesterol levels."

He grinned back at her, the storm clouds passing over for the time being. "Nope. And I know this place that has the best chili cheese fries in the county." He threw the transmission back into Drive and pulled out onto the road, heading toward Lawrence, and whatever adventure awaited.

((Much sad stuff! But we got a wee bit of happy in there, too. Thanks, as always, to Dean's player for doing most of the writing in this scene!))