<P> The year Sam spends while Dean and Castiel are trapped in Purgatory is revealed through various flashbacks in the first half of the season . Now left on his own, Sam believes that Dean had been killed when Dick exploded, and gives up hunting . After several months, he accidentally runs over a stray dog and, panicked, takes it to an animal hospital . The veterinarian who saves the dog's life--Amelia Richardson--convinces Sam to take responsibility for the stray by adopting it . Despite a rocky start, Sam and Amelia fall in love and even buy a house together in Kermit, Texas . They later find out that her husband Don, who she had believed was killed in action, was actually still alive . Sam wants to stay with Amelia, but ultimately decides to leave and give her the opportunity to reconnect with Don . </P> <P> In the season premiere "We Need to Talk About Kevin", Sam runs into Dean and learns that Dean had just escaped from Purgatory; upon learning about what Sam had been doing the past year, Dean is upset that Sam had not even tried to save him or continued hunting . They find out that Kevin had managed to escape from Crowley six months ago and left Sam a string of desperate voice messages, begging for help . Sam feels guilty and joins Dean in tracking down Kevin, who reveals that he has discovered a passage in the Word of God that would banish all demons from Earth forever . The spell requires three trials be performed by one person . Although Dean tries to do it himself in order to protect Sam from any possible consequence of the trials, Sam ends up completing the first trial (killing a hellhound and bathing in its blood) in "Trial and Error" to protect Dean; he persuades his brother to let him finish the rest by reasoning that Dean would be all - too - willing to sacrifice himself for the trials whereas Sam would fight so that both of them could live . However, taking on the trials quickly begins "damaging" Sam, which worries Dean . </P> <P> After meeting Benny--the vampire who helped Dean escape from Purgatory in exchange for Dean resurrecting him--at the end of "Blood Brother", Sam immediately distrusts him, and asks Martin (a friend of their father's who had previously appeared in Season 5's "Sam, Interrupted") to monitor Benny . Martin contacts Sam in "Citizen Fang" to tell him that he believes Benny killed somebody, bringing the Winchesters to Carencro, Louisiana to help investigate . However, upon receiving an emergency text from Amelia and being unable to get a hold of her, Sam tears back to Kermit . He finds Amelia happily reunited with Don, and realizes that the text had been a trick by Dean to divert him from Benny . Enraged, Sam initially refuses to continue hunting with Dean in the following episode . Castiel--who has been mysteriously rescued from Purgatory--enlists his help in saving the angel Samandriel from being tortured by Crowley, forcing the brothers to reluctantly work together again . When forced by both Dean and Amelia to choose, Sam decides to rejoin his brother and fully commit himself to sealing Hell over returning to his normal life with Amelia . Around this time, Sam and Dean encounter their time - traveling paternal grandfather Henry Winchester and discover that through him, they are the legacies to an extinct secret society of compilers of supernatural information and artifacts known as the Men of Letters . Although they manage to subdue the demonic Abaddon, who has pursued Henry into the present, their grandfather is killed, leaving Sam and Dean the last link to the Men of Letters . They then inherit the bunker of the Men of Letters as their first real home . </P> <P> Sam completes the second trial--saving an innocent soul (in this case, Bobby) from Hell and sending it to Heaven--in "Taxi Driver" with the help of Benny, who sacrifices himself in the process of guiding Sam and Bobby out of Hell and thus finally causes Sam to admit to Dean that he had been wrong about Benny . Unfortunately, Sam's illness from the trials worsens to the point that Dean temporarily restricts him from hunting out of worry for his condition . Nevertheless, Sam remains determined to finish the trials and seal Hell because, viewing all the times he has failed Dean in the past (such as not looking for him when he was in Purgatory) as his worst sins, he has become obsessed with not letting Dean down anymore . He and Dean attempt to use Abaddon for the third trial, that of restoring a demon's humanity, but she escapes while they are distracted by a call from Crowley, who has begun murdering everyone they've ever saved to force them to call off the trials . After Crowley kills Sam's love interest Sarah Blake from Season 1's "Provenance", Sam is devastated and briefly contemplates giving in to Crowley's demands, but he and Dean ultimately feign surrender to lure Crowley to them and take him prisoner in the season finale "Sacrifice" so that they can use him for the third trial instead . Sam is on the verge of fully restoring Crowley's humanity when Dean finds out that completing the trials will kill Sam . Although Sam, having fallen into deep guilt and despair due to constant reminders from Dean of how he'd failed him, wants to finish the trials anyway, Dean convinces him to let it go . The effects of the trials remain, however, leaving Sam in dire condition in the final moments of the finale . </P>

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