Sam was livid when he saw Lex and Dean fighting. He was thirteen. He did not need his older brother to fight his battles for him. Besides, Lex was alright. He had actually been a pretty good sport about the basketball game, and Clark thought the world of him. Dean was on edge about his father abandoning him, but so was Lex—Sam had overheard Mr. and Mrs. Kent talking about it. Lex and Dean should have been friends, not rivals. Sam would have been as annoyed at Lex as he was at Dean, but Lex wasn't his brother. Clark could deal with Lex.

Sam pretended to be asleep when Dean came into the room after the fight. He knew his brother—if he started telling him off now, they would just argue, and probably end up yelling and waking up the whole household all over again. So Sam decided to let Dean lie on the hard floor for the remainder of the night with his cuts and bruises. Dean would stew over everything that had happened, and he'd be much more ready to talk in the morning.

Dean tossed and turned on the floor, though, his restlessness frequently accompanied by slight gasps of pain, which meant Sam couldn't get to sleep, either. Finally, Sam sat up in bed—apparently, they were doing this tonight.

"Dean," he whispered.

"Did you hear the scream?"

Sam blinked a couple of times, and he stood to turn on the light. "What scream?"

Dean rubbed his eyes, groaning as he sat up. "It sounded like someone got killed."

Sam sat back down on the bed. " . . . Was it Dad?"

"No, no. It was a woman."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. It came from the opposite direction as our cabin."

Sam swallowed hard. "It could be whatever Dad was hunting."

"Probably."

"Are you going to go investigate in the morning?" Most monsters were more active at night, and this one definitely wasn't an exception, if it had made its kill shortly after midnight. It was safer to scout out during the daytime.

"I'm grounded to the house tomorrow."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "And that's going to stop you?"

"The Kents know I'm a flight risk. They're going to be watching me, and if I run off, they'll probably call the police."

"Well, maybe they should!"

Dean's eyes pierced Sam's. "You know what happens if they do."

Sam winced. Their dad had drilled that into them enough times. It was never worth the risk of getting CPS involved. "Well, what if we leave right now? We can at least do some recon . . ."

Dean let his breath out. "I'm hurt, Sam. I can barely sit up straight. I'll be useless in a fight."

Sam breathed in to suggest that maybe he could go by himself tomorrow, but he stopped himself at the last minute. Dean would forbid it without even really stopping to think about it, and then anything Sam did to try to sneak away about be suspicious. But if Sam didn't say anything, Dean wouldn't suspect anything. Sam would just slip away when he was supposed to be doing chores, do enough recon to know what kind of creature they were dealing with, and be back before anyone knew he was gone.

He was thirteen. He was old enough to scope out a kill site; he knew what to look for, and he knew what to avoid.

The only challenge was that he really didn't know his way around this area, and he didn't have any sort of map or other guide. But he could figure that out when he got there.