Chapter Text
Dean opened his eyes.
His vision was blurry, and he tried to remember what had happened before he blacked out. He’d been tired, real tired, tired from exertion, but mostly from blood loss. Sam and John had been talking. Dean had tried to pay attention, but it was like his ears were stuffed with cotton, like the world was miles off through a haze of static. After that…
Dean couldn’t remember what came next.
A harsh white light filled the Impala. Dean squinted towards it. Headlights. Headlights of what…? The side of his car was crumpled in like it had been hit by a—truck.
We got in a car accident? Then—
Dean breathed in a bloody, wet breath. When he focused he could make out the relief-lit forms of Sam and John. They weren’t moving.
Shit.
Outside, the door to the truck opened and the old man inside maneuvered himself out, his feet hitting the soft dirt of the field next to the highway.
He moved forward towards the still, black car, walking with the careful deliberation of the possessed. He walked around the back and paused on the far side. He grinned sickeningly down at Dean, who was conscious, but unable to do anything worthwhile. Dean would have the worst death, knowing what had been done and what was being done to him.
The man yanked the door to the driver’s side open and Sam fell out to the side, hitting the ground at an unnatural angle, his body sliding in the dirt. The fact that Sam made no motion to cushion his fall or push himself up was not a good sign. The man leaned across the front seat, grabbing John Winchester’s sleeve, pulling him slowly but inexorably towards him.
Breath shuddered from Dean weakly. His anger rose. His body wouldn’t respond. Sam had the gun. Even if Dean’d had it, he doubted he could’ve shot steady -- that John would’ve killed him for blowing the last bullet, aside. He gritted his teeth and slipped his right hand under his left arm to grope for the door handle as surreptitiously as he could. If he could get out of the car, if he could get on his feet…
Those were two big ifs.
John slumped over the seat as he was dragged, but the hand dropped him when the old man stumbled back and fell. Sam was barely conscious. He tasted blood and dirt, and air seemed incredibly lacking, but his muscles were trained and there was no Winchester that was utterly unable to act, even in a semi-conscious state. He had grabbed the old man’s leg, sending him sprawling, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting up again.
Dean stumbled out of the car, doubled over as he staggered forward. Adrenaline pumped in his veins. There wasn’t much blood for it to urge around. Creedence Clearwater Revival crooned into their next song, from the tape deck. Dean’s memory followed the lyrics despite his muted hearing. He focused on the music to keep moving.
The man from the magazine said I was on my way.
Somewhere I lost connections, ran out of songs to play.
I came into town, a one night stand, looks like my plans fell through
Oh! Lord, stuck in Lodi again.
Dean lurched towards the old man rising from the ground with preternatural ease. Dean clutched at his arm and threw a punch to his stomach with all the strength he could muster.
Sam’s head swam wildly. He wasn’t going to be much help to anyone, in a fight. John had taken the brunt of the truck when it slammed into the Impala, and was out cold. Dean was on his own in this endeavor.
The old man fell over again, his head clunking unhealthily, but not lethally, against the half solid earth. It was a demon, but not the demon. It stared up at the oldest of the brothers Winchester with large black eyes and began to rise again, ignoring the bones that cricked with arthritis.
Dean glared those black eyes down. The body was old, but Dean wasn’t sure how much he’d have to break it to stop the demon cold. Meg had fallen seven stories and she’d passed out for awhile, but lived. Dean took a swing at the old man’s head, fist connecting with weathered, wrinkled skin. There was no room for sympathy, right now.
It took some beating for the old body to give out. Had it been merely human, the fall alone would have done it, but the demon sustained the body much longer than was natural. Eventually, the trucker lay still.
Half in the car, his legs up in the door, over the floor of the driver’s side, and his front face down in the dirt next to it, Sam was just as stationary, though he had that animation that was somewhat lacking from John’s form, laying over the front seat.
When Dean was sure the trucker had stopped moving, he didn’t check twice. He was already panting with exhaustion as he dragged himself to his brother’s side, pushing one bloody palm against the hood of the car. He could feel the weight of his cell phone in his pocket, but he didn’t want to call 911 right now and give the bastard on the ground another person to possess.
“Sam.”
Dean knew if he dropped to his knees to check on Sam, he wouldn’t be getting back up.
Sam half pushed himself up with his arm, fully falling out of the car. He spat and coughed. He tried to talk, but his mouth was numb. From the blood dribbling out of his mouth, he was pretty certain he’d bit his tongue.
“Gotta get to the hospital.” Every syllable came out with a lisp, a hissing sound.
Dean shook his head. “Can’t call an ambulance. Demon’ll jump bodies… Gotta get rid of it, first.” He couldn’t remember how far Sam had said the nearest hospital was. He hissed in pain through his teeth as the adrenaline began to fade and hurt ached through his body.
Sam lifted his head shakily. He glanced back at John with fogged eyes, but he could tell their father was bleeding pretty intensely, and Dean had lost a lot of blood before the crash had even occurred.
“Dean… if we don’t, we’re gonna die anyways.”
Dean’s stomach sank. It was probably true. He kept thinking, If we could just…
“How bad are you hurt?”
Sam shook his head, then instantly regretted it, groaning. “Unno…head’s pretty b-bad. Probably a concussion…” His Winchesterness was kicking in, and he tried to concentrate, to gauge his injuries. “Think my arm is broken…” He wasn’t compos mentis enough to tell his right from left. “Legs…can’t feel my legs.” It could just be shock, could also be… Now was not the time to think about that possibility. He looked up at Dean. “What about Dad? Is he… breathing?”
Dean cursed under his breath, realizing he was in the best condition of all of them. He limped around the car door and crawled halfway into the front seat, trying not to step on Sam. Even in the light of the truck, his vision was blacking. The truck had been his first plan, but there was no one in any condition to drive it. He groped numbly for a pulse for a minute before he put his hand in front of John’s mouth, and waited. After one tense moment he felt a weak exhalation of moist air against the back of it.
“Yeah. Yeah. He’s breathing. Alright…” He was light headed. “Alright. I… I’m gonna call emergency, and then I gotta… do somethin’ about truck guy.”
Dean fumbled for his cell phone. He was doing all right, so far, just one more surge of adrenaline, and maybe he could finish him. He had his limbs, he hadn’t hit his head too hard: it was just his blood, just his brain starving for air; just that one little problem.
“Dean, sit down,” Sam managed to make out around his swollen tongue. He reached out for his brother, tugging him downwards. He could tell Dean was close to passing out.
Sam managed to turn himself over, rolling onto his back, and then he felt his ribs and gasped. Oh man, something was totally pressing against something else in there. He hadn't even noticed it before. He felt the phantom sensation of a steering wheel against his chest, and he was sure there would be a circle shaped bruise on him.
"Dean sit down..." He muttered, feeling out of it. "Sit down." He swallowed hard. He had to get some kind of control.
Dean could hear Sam’s words: sit down, sit down. He clutched at the top edge of the car door one-handed as Sam tugged on his pants. Down was gonna mean out. Definitely out. Dean had the nagging feeling he hadn't done enough to ensure their safety at a hospital. That demon... that demon was still right there. It needed an exorcism...
Dean held the phone close to his face as he punched the numbers in with his thumb. Then he realized... he didn't know where they were. He didn't know how far they were from that cabin. For a minute, it was all he could think about.
"Sam. Where are we?"
"GPS," he garbled out. "It has GPS. Make the call. Make the call." He coughed and half sat up. Somehow he managed to maneuver himself around to the car, leaning against it. He lifted a hand to his father's face, half heartedly wiping some of the blood from his rough skin.
"Exorcizo te... omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei..." he muttered from memory. He turned and spat blood from his numb mouth. The Latin was shaky and the pronunciation bad with his tongue swollen, but it would do.
The body on the ground twitched.
"Patris omnipotentis...et....et in noimine Jesu. In noimine Jesu...Christo." He patted his father's jacket as the trucker convulsed, finding no book. The book, the book...where was the book? His Latin was good (hell, he was almost fluent in it), but not that good. He strained his mind, trying to remember where they'd put the journal.
"Christi Filii ejus, domini et judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus." He pushed himself away from the car with a harsh cough, trying to drag himself towards the back seat. Maybe it was back there. "Sancti...sancti..."
The 911 operator wasn't real cooperative. She kept asking inconvenient questions like "What is your name?" that Dean had to ignore because he wasn't sure what fake ID was in his wallet right now and Dean Winchester was long dead.
"Look... yeah, four people injured... Yeah, a white eighteen w-wheeler and a sixty... sixty seven Chevy I-impala..." He couldn't see. Not a thing. "Hehe... I'd love to stay on the line... It's... s'kinda a question of ability..."
"Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei...dei....Crap." What was the guy's name? Sam crawled towards the body, touching it as it kicked. He'd have to hope this was good enough. "Quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est, ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo." The words rolled out of him now, out of habit. He had spoken them since he was small, worshipped the language, the tongue of the law when he was older. He could do this.
"Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem." A world on fire. He took a deep breath. "Dean, I need the journal. Need the...journal." He looked back at his brother, hoping that maybe it was in his brother's coat. The Catholic opening was a classic. It was as good as anything to start with, but he'd need that journal to know which one to finish it with.
The old man punched him suddenly and spat, and his saliva burned. Sam rolled to the side and cried out as his broken ribs dug in. "Spiritus sancti..." He pressed his hand to the man's face, and the demon sprang back. "Spiritus sancti..."
The cell phone dropped from Dean's fingers to thunk against the wet soil beneath. "They got my car, Sam..." Dean muttered, hooking his arm over the door as he tried to stay on his feet. Sam had just said something. Something important. There were still things he needed to do. Because the car had... the car... "Those sons of bitches got my car!" He said it like he could. not. believe it. Everything was black. But he felt warm, now. Comfortable warm. He couldn’t remember what Sam needed.
Sam was coughing, and he couldn't hear Dean's words, the roaring in his ears too much. No choice now. He'd just have to keep going and hope that Catholic would be enough.
"Ephpheta, quod est, Adaperire." He took a deep breath, but then he felt a weight settle on his chest, and he coughed. Hands wrapped around his throat. "In odorem suavitatis....su..s...gnh..." He couldn't breath. He gasped and choked. He could feel an intense pain in his chest, something sinking deep into something soft. Oh god, his lungs, his chest. Oh god. He couldn't summon the breath to get the words out, but he kept mouthing them, his vision blurring and darkening. "Tu.... autem effugare, diabole...dia...b.... appropinquabit....enim judicium Dei...Dei." His lips barely moved in the pattern necessary to make such words, but he could hear them echoing in his head, and all he could think was: this has to be the most poorly done exorcism I've ever performed. Dei. In noimine dei...in noimine...
Dean's arm slipped off the car door as he sunk to his knees. He hit the dirt face first. He was warm, and he was comfortable. He felt good for the first time in days. Yeah... there was some stuff to do... but he'd just take a breather, right here... just for a...
Sam reached up with a hand, and he felt a face above him, but then his hand was numb and he couldn't feel anything at all.
When the ambulance arrived at the site, the truck driver was dead, and Sam was still as a rock, or a doll. The paramedics had almost given up when they managed to force him to breathe. They didn't look happy about it -- after all, they didn't know just how long he'd been without oxygen.
----
The three battered bodies were loaded up, and by the time John awoke, he was in a hospital bed, his body heavily bandaged. His memories were fuzzy, but he saw his eldest son, his baby boy in the next hospital bed over, and despite himself he felt panic trip over him.
"Dean...Dean, wake up." He didn't even raise his voice. It wasn't his style.
Dean had been fading in and out of consciousness since his transfusion. He'd even eaten a little on his own that morning. The fact that there was a cute nurse encouraging him on had helped a lot. Rebecca Schiffer. Dean smiled a little at that first conscious thought. He blinked against the fluorescent lights above his bed, expression sobering. He slowly turned his head to look over at the bed beside him. His neck was kind of stiff. His lip tugged up in a smirk at his dad's fading panicked expression. (Not quite so obvious on John's face as it would have been with more open people.)
"Afternoon, dad."
John nodded a bit, as if checking off the list the fact that Dean was now verified to be alright. He glanced around the room, frowning.
"Where's your brother?" He thought back, remembered the demon being inside of him, begging Sam to shoot him, driving away, towards the hospital...Had they made it? Had he just passed out? If so, he thought Sam was probably elsewhere in the hospital. Sam had been the only uninjured one, besides his bruises... John realized through his grogginess that he didn’t remember being injured as badly as he was now, himself. "What happened?"
Dean's cocky smirk faded. He worked his mouth a second, swallowing before he spoke.
"Got broadsided with an eighteen wheeler. Sam... he's... He's alive. ICU."
John settled back into the bed slowly, his mind abuzz. "...it was them, wasn't it?" Too much of a coincidence. Coincidences didn't occur to Winchesters
"Yeah. Guy got out. Tried to finish us... Can't remember much of it. Think Sam pulled off an exorcism, maybe." Dean scowled at the television running advertisements for breath strips. "We gotta get Sam better and get out of here. Gonna be hard to keep the story straight. Bet they've already run our IDs." Dean waved his hand in greeting. "I'm Roger Glover."
John made a huffing noise and didn't smile, but Dean would know that as a laugh. "And I am?" He would need to know, so he could respond appropriately.
"Derek Montgomery, accordin’ to your charts. I dunno what Sam's name is. Just kept callin’ him my cousin." It might be lucky, if it was Sam Winchester--'cause that'd match up with the car insurance, though it meant the demons might track them down faster. So much for touching up the paint on the Impala. Man. My car’s totaled. That burns.
John nodded slowly. "Good." He paused. "Good." Then nodded again -- he was thinking. They were in trouble. It seemed like they weren't, but they were. Normal folks would consider being at the hospital after a life threatening car accident a good thing, but for them it was just as dodgy. They were easy prey here, not to mention their questionable identities. "We need to get your brother and move out as soon as we can." He shifted his legs - bullet hole, he felt, but no breaks. Good, his legs were still usable.
"Better play dead until he's downgraded outta ICU. I don't wanna move him yet. Say he ruptured two organs, broke his arm... head trauma, wasn’t breathin’ when they found him." Even when they got Sam outta the hospital, he was gonna have to lay up somewhere for a couple weeks, maybe longer. Dean wondered if their dad would stick around for that... He doubted it.
John made a slight face at the phrase 'play dead', which was a poor choice of words, but nodded. "We get ourselves out of here as soon as we can." He looked over at his son. "What's your condition? If you can walk, we need to leave; if there's no chance of something bursting." His mind was moving fast - he wouldn't have survived this long if he couldn't think on his feet. "We find a place to set up. Somewhere not as vulnerable. Regroup. Sam can stay here until he's moveable, but we'll have to keep a close eye on him." There was a part of John Winchester that hated to think like this - cutting losses - about his sons. He was their father, and that paternal part of him needed to look after them. But the fact was that if he and Dean stayed here to take care of Sam they might all end up getting killed. They'd do what they could to protect him, but they needed to at least move themselves to safety. So long as he and Dean stayed alive, the greater chance Sam had of surviving.
Still, John felt dirty knowing he was leaving one son behind to save the other.
Dean didn't like that idea. He didn't like that idea one bit. Leaving Sam at the hospital, leaving him vulnerable... If Dean was still in recovery, he could be that much closer to him. Not that he'd know if Sam was under attack, even right now... But he knew just what John Winchester was thinking.
"I dunno, dad, I lost a lot of blood," he said, flashing a grin with a lift of his brows. So sorry.
John gave his son a look. "You'll lose a whole lot more if a demon comes in here in the night." He cleared his throat, pushing himself up with a wince and reached for his own chart, looking it over. "It's just one trip, Dean. Once we have a safe place to stay, you can rest for a bit." His boys had soldiered through plenty, and John expected them to keep that up.
Dean was turning his options over in his mind when he heard himself saying:
"Yes, sir."
That wasn't what he was going for. It was a whole lot easier standing up to John when Sam was there with him. He shot his IV drip a nasty look. It was true he'd be a lot more useful to Sam if they found the Impala and geared up. From what he'd heard at the cabin, Sam might not even be in danger from demons, on his own -- just of being released into the custody of the police.
The time he’d spent possessed by the demon was somewhat fuzzy for John, as it was for all possessees, but it seemed the demon had made a special attempt to let him see and feel everything he'd been forced to do. A special little torture, devised just for him.
So, John remembered, he remembered those words. My plans for you, Sammy. You, and all the children like you. They made him...antsy. They made him worry, for his son, for both of his sons. For the implications. It was easier when evil was black and good was white - spirits were like that. Evil was evil and the right thing to do was clear as day. Shades of grey were more difficult, and Sam was currently residing in middle grey, and John just plain didn't like that.
He put his chart down, however, when the doctor came to talk to them.
The man was in the middle of his speech to them about their conditions when John interrupted him.
"When can we check out?"
The doctor looked confused, baffled, even.
"I...well. I wouldn't suggest it for at least another few days. Your collarbone was snapped in two places, and - "
"I understand. I'm an ex-marine, young man." He said with slow, cool assurance. "I'm used to hurting. I'm asking when you would let us check out without sending in the nurses to restrain us."
"Well...I mean, I suppose if you were desperate to leave, you could do so tomorrow morning. Your collar bone has been set, but-..." He shook his head. "I just don't know. Your friend Mr. Glover, here, has lost a lot of blood..." The doctor looked over to Dean, who had a fluids drip as well as a blood bag, one IV in his hand, the other in the inside of his elbow. "We've replaced a significant amount of the blood lost..." He said, managing to get over his surprise and shift back into doctor mode, lifting up Dean's chart and looking over it. "I suppose in the theoretical sense your body should be able to replace the rest itself," he said, addressing Dean.
"Good," John said, responding for his son.
This was what it had been like before Sam came back into Dean's life. John making the calls, Dean keeping his mouth shut. Sir, yes, sir. Dean nodded along with the conversation, but that was the extent of his involvement. It sounded good so far. Maybe nobody had dug too deep, yet. A part of him felt okay about letting John make the calls. He was tired, he was beat, and it was a complicated situation... Maybe not wanting to leave Sam behind was a little irrational.
John didn't expect his son to say anything, so he didn't blink an eye when Dean stayed silent. He paused, worried about using the wrong name, but his concern for his youngest son overrode that particular worry.
"There was another person in the car. Sam Winchester. Roger told me he was brought here as well."
"Yes." The doctor nodded. "However, he isn't my patient. As I understand it, the most serious injury is his ribs and the organ damage underneath, from his impact with the steering wheel. I know he had to be intubated - he wasn't breathing when the paramedics arrived at the site. There is significant damage to the trachea. Despite the bizarre circumstances, it looked as if he was strangled - given the condition of the driver of the truck, we can only suspect that he had something to do with that. The police suspect some kind of drug-related incident." He held the clip board in front of himself, taking a deep breath.
"When can we see him?" John asked in his normal flat and firm tone, one that booked no argument.
"He's stable, as I understand it. He can be visited at any time, now."
Dean waited until the doctor had left the room to slip his IV out of his arm. He pressed his thumb against the vein. "I'm gonna go see Sam." He wanted to see him once, at least, before they split. He was feeling pretty good, all things considered. Good enough to be on his feet right now, anyway. He'd have a lot of chance for bed rest somewhere safer, with rocksalt across the windows and doors.
John glanced over at him, then nodded. "Be careful." He glanced around. "Do you have my journal?"
Dean inclined his hospital bed to an upright position. He grimaced as he sat up, hearing joints pop and crack as they shifted into gear. He shook his head. "No. It's probably under the car seat, or something. We better clean the car out first thing tomorrow."
"First thing." John said with a stern nod. "Take it slow, alright?"
Dean responded with a nod. He took a minute to put up his bedpan and hang up his IV so it looked like the doctor had had someone let him out. And that was good, because while he was pulling his boxerbriefs on, Rachel Schiffer came in. Dean put on a winning grin, wagging his finger towards her, stealing the conversation starter. "Hey there, it's... Rachel, right?"
The brunette stopped up in surprise and walked over to check his chart. "Mr. Glover, I didn't know someone else had been in..."
"Roger. Yeah, I was gonna go see my cousin. Doctor sent a nurse in to help me get up but she got a page a minute ago. Forgot to mark the chart." Dean shrugged, straightening out his hospital robe. Rachel was very high on the list right now. She'd given him a sponge bath when he was less out than he pretended to be.
Rachel watched him sidelong as she went to check John's chart. (Oh yeeeah, points for the skimpy robe thing. Too bad he put underwear on.) She flashed John a smile before scribbling something on the chart.
"Hey. You think you could do me a favor? Sounds like my cousin's gonna be out awhile and we'd like to get the stuff out of his car." Dean looked 'grim.' "I've heard of people getting robbed... Just not sure where they impound cars around here."
"Oh! Sure. I had my car towed last year." Rachel struck an 'embarrassed' look. She wasn't paying much attention to John at all. "I can probably Mapquest it for you or something..."
"Thanks." Dean threw a wink. "That'd be great."
John paid her as little attention, having found a notebook in the drawer of the table beside his bed, and, acquiring a pen, had begun scribbling away in it. Dean was doing what he had to do, as was right, and John was making his notes. The things he could remember, the things he couldn't remember, because if you didn't write them down they got garbled. Memory faded with time. He would have to use these notes to do his research.
Dean excused himself from the hospital room. Rachel Schiffer. At least he wasn't gonna be lonely waiting around for Sam to wake up. It wasn't hard to find the room his brother had been assigned to. He let himself in.
It was a ward as opposed to a private room, like the one in the Extended Recovery wing that he and John had. There were beds on either wall, some occupied and some not. Most of them appeared to be asleep, though one man at the end of a row was reading a book.
Sam's long body barely fit into the bed, his head propped up on a pillow. His eyes were shut, and he was still intubated, the tubing taped around the edges of his mouth.
Dean gave a nod to the man at the end of the row, who'd looked up at him, and found a stool to pull over. He dragged himself up on it, watching Sam's breath fog the tube. It hurt. It hurt to see his brother injured that bad. He wondered what he'd been doing, if he let Sam get that way. He couldn't remember much of it, now--flashes of action, headlights white on a wrinkled, black-eyed face in the dark of night.
"Close one, hunh?"
Hit by a truck. After everything else, something so mundane had put the Winchesters in the hospital.
Sam remained still. He was hooked up to a monitor that checked his vitals every now and again, and did so silently. He had the same IVs that Dean'd had, though he had no blood bag.
"Can I help you?" A nurse said, leaning over just slightly, her dark hair falling over her shoulder, peering at Dean with a look of curiosity that refrained from suspicion until she found out his identity.
Dean glanced over at her. Normally he was a big fan of nurses: the uniforms, high heel shoes, little hats-- and real nurses that weren't from pornos, too. Just... wasn't exactly the time.
"M'cousin. They said I could come see him." He gestured vaguely to illustrate the hypothetical 'they.' "Do I need to come back later, Miss...?" He scanned for her nametag.
She straightened and smiled once she realized who he was, and shook her head.
"Esperanza, and no, no. You're welcome to stay. Since you're staying here too, there's not really a policy with regards to visiting hours." She glanced at the bed. "He's being moved, tomorrow."
"Out of ICU? That's good news." Dean even smiled, a tired, grateful kind of smile. That's how good a news it was. Or his libido was revving up. ‘Old habits,’ and all.
She paused and shifted. "...oh, I'm sorry, I...Mr. Winchester, is it?" She assumed from glancing at Sam's chart. "I thought they'd told you. He's being moved to the Observation Ward, there's nothing more we can do here. He's in a comatose state."
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in.
"Mr. Glover," Dean corrected numbly. His interest in nurse winked out like a dead ember. He searched Sam's face. Coma. That put them stationary for god knew how long. It wasn't that he was more afraid for Sam's life, not right yet, because he had a stubborn belief in the perseverance of his family members... but it was a dangerous situation in the long term. The Winchesters survived by staying on the move.
"Mr. Glover, excuse me." She nodded slightly, pausing, then explaining to him as she was trained to do. "We estimate that when the paramedics arrived on the scene he had been without oxygen for five or six minutes. It appears someone choked him...I believe that the police need to talk to you and your friend." She wet her lips. "He could wake up any time, but the longer it lasts, well..."
"Yeah. I know how it works."
Dean had watched daytime television. People went into comas all the time.
When the stillness of Sam's body had spent its impact, Dean realized he'd been a little short with Miss Esperanza. "Sorry. Just... wasn't expecting that." He chuckled, a smile on his lips that passed quickly: "His brother died a few months ago. Dad's always somewhere else. It's pretty much me and him, you know?"
Dean wanted her to know, because he wanted to make sure Miss Esperanza kept a close personal eye on his brother when he might otherwise be left alone in some long-term care unit.
"No, it's alright...No one ever expects anything like that." She took a deep breath and settled back on her heels. "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like." She put Sam's chart down, moving back towards the door. "If you need anything, the nurses’ station is right outside."
"Thanks."
A coma. It felt even more like a personal failure on his part. When Nurse Esperanza left he slid his hand over the back of Sam's, let it rest there, quiet and as intimate as he got. If they'd been alone somewhere, not in a crowded hospital unit, he might have done something more sentimental (maybe a lot more sentimental), but they were, and people who weren't Sam weren't passed out, and that wasn't happening. Not right now.
Dean looked at Sam real hard, like just that could draw him out... He'd have to tell John. He wasn’t sure where his dad would make the call.
----
Sam was warm and still, and in his head, Latin words scratched into the insides of his skull. He had some sense that Dean was near him, but it wasn't doing him any good, not without the journal.
He could feel someone sitting on his chest, and god did it hurt.
----
On the outside, the ward was somewhat cool with recirculated air, and the faint buzz of voices on speakers, and there was little more to it than that.
Dean sat with him awhile. He wasn't the best at this kind of situation where any one-sided conversation would reveal deep emotional vulnerabilities. He didn't really want that guy reading nearby to know he had that kind of thing going on inside him. Dean was manly. He drank beer, had a lot of guns, and could kill a zombie with his bare hands. He wanted to carry Sam off and curl up together, like he used to, in that familiar, comfortable nearness; hole up with him, like some mother wolverine, and take care of him until he woke up. That wasn't very manly, and he wasn't very comfortable with that kind of desire--except that wolverine part--but it compelled him on an instinctive kind of level, on the level where he'd do anything and kill anyone for Sam or for John.
Dean sat with Sam until he was hungry, and he had to take a piss, and he was a little lightheaded because he wasn't 100% for sitting upright for long periods of time. When all that caught up with him, he went to find the bathroom, and some food, because he had to be in shape if a fight found him.
----
Jessica sat down like she were perched on the edge of a river. She watched Sam's movements, the way he tore through the dirt. She would have helped him, god she would have done anything to help him, but he couldn't even see her. What good could she do?
Her hands grazed the stone and she thought about that day in the caf, sitting with her friends, barely noticing the insanely tall boy who was too buried in books to notice anything. Long limbs, something of that gangly puppy syndrome, and clothes that were so hand-me-down that in the end he didn't look like anything impressive at all.
He looked different now, but there was nothing she could do about that. She bit nails that didn't exist and watched a dream world pass by.
----
Dean went back to John, eventually, and he told him the news. Even if he'd rather have stayed beside Sam, he was otherwise ready to get moving again, to get his hands into something he could affect. Short periods of slouching around and looking good were fine, but long periods of inactivity weren't Dean's style. He had an itchy feeling on the back of his neck and in the back of his mind.
John looked up at his eldest when he came back in, listening to his news. He took a deep breath, leaning his head down, putting a hand to his forehead. It was difficult to be both a father and a drill sergeant. He had to weigh all the options and judge what was the best thing to do, but the best thing to do would end up losing him a son, and he couldn't do that.
He took a deep breath and raised his head.
"I'm getting out of here now. I'll get to the car and get everything, find a motel and check in. I want you to stay here with your brother for the time being. If he wakes up, you'll have to get him out of here. Once everything is settled, I'll call for you, and we'll move from there."
Dean had to run the words by himself twice. The part of him that had been looking forward to digging around a junkyard shut up pretty quick in face of the part of him that hadn't excepted John to let him stay with Sam. He wasn't sure if Thanks, dad was exactly the right response to give his drill sergeant, because he was sure John had less than compassionate reasons for wanting him to stick around. It was a pretty good rule of thumb that John acted from less than compassionate reasons four out of five decisions.
"Yes'sir," he said, instead.
John loved both his boys dearly, but he knew he couldn't allow something like that to effect his decisions too deeply. That would just get them killed. He shifted in his bed, turning to the side with a slight grunt of pain, getting to his feet, feeling some of his bones crack and pop - he was getting too old for this kind of crap. He yanked the IV out of his hand, the other in a sling to keep him from shifting his newly acquired broken collar bone.
He nodded to Dean.
"Take care." He paused. "If anything comes...You gotta remember that you can't just carry Sammy out of here. You put yourself first, you understand? He doesn't have a chance in hell if you get taken down for being stubborn." He gave his final warning, moving cautiously towards the door.
Dean didn't say anything to that for a minute. He got it. He understood the words. It just wasn't something he could necessarily agree to. Not in whole, anyway. If he left, it'd be because it was better for Sam -- not because he'd put himself first. He climbed back into his own hospital bed as John headed for the door, tugging the covers up over him. Conflict passed over his features. He spoke after a few seconds' second thoughts.
"You call me if you need me. If y' get over your head."
Yeah. There was about as a good a chance of John doing that as Dean not carrying Sam out. Dean grinned, because he knew it.
John half quirked one side of his mouth up. "Yeah. I'll do that, son." He responded, and then was out the door, shifting his injured gait into a perfectly even walk, as if he hadn't been shot in the leg just the other day.
Any time John left, Dean got the feeling he might not see him again for a long time. This time, he had good reason to believe otherwise, and he shook it off and picked up the television remote and flipped channels for awhile. He kind of wanted his blood bag back, seeing as he wasn't feeling one-hundred percent. He let Rachel Schiffer hook his IV back up when she came in to check on them. It was a good enough reason to buy more hospital time. He made up something about John's leaving and took the Mapquest printout from her and thanked her and got her phone number, in case he had any further questions. He wanted to go see Sam again, but dragging his IV rack around would be a pain. He figured it'd be better to mend up in case a fight came his way. Later on, after a couple of hours of original series Star Trek reruns he could deliver the lines along with on Spike TV, he ended up falling asleep.
----
The harsh light of the truck's headlights illuminated the space in front of Dean, and there was no Impala to block it. It lit up the scrub brush and dry dirt of the field and cast wild shadows about the area.
Sam was laying in the red dirt, his head arched back. There was something, some kind of shadow on his chest, and it had dark hands clasped around the youngest Winchester's throat.
Dean was going to shoot it. He thought he was going to shoot it at first but his hands closed on empty air. He patted himself down, looking for a pistol, or a dagger, or something, and there was nothing. He gritted his teeth and tried for kicking the shadow where he thought its stomach should be.
It didn't fall over - in fact, Dean's foot impacted nothing at all, just air, but the air seemed to push the shadow away, causing it to dissipate into the darkness surrounding them outside of the truck's light.
Sam gasped for breath, arching his back a bit to relieve the pressure on his chest.
Dean dropped down on his knees beside him. He lifted him up and got a leg behind him he could rest on and held the back of his head to steady him saying, "Sam. Sammy. It's okay. You're good."
Dean couldn't place where he was, or how he'd gotten there. He had a vague, implacable sense of déjà vu. In the logic of dreamtime, he was concerned with the present.
Sam leaned back against Dean's knee, and his eyes stayed shut. He'd had some strange sense that Dean was nearby, but it felt like that for the past few years he just hadn't been there, right there, next to him.
He opened his eyes and looked up at Dean, saw his brother's face, not distorted and perverted like everything else in this god forsaken field, but real and just as it should have been.
In nomine Dei...
He sat up, heaving in one great gasp of air, lifting a hand to his chest, the pressure still deep and heavy there, as if the shadow had never left. He looked back at Dean.
"I need the journal, I can't finish without..." He looked around suddenly, at the darkness, just barely able to make out the horizon line by a faint red glow, as if dawn were coming, but he was sure it was a long way off.
Dean's hand reached out after Sam, halfway, reflexively, as Sam sat up, then his fingers curled and he let him go. He studied Sam seriously, assessing if he was still under threat.
"It's in the car."
Dean knew that, at least, was true.
Sam looked back at his brother, shifting his feet underneath him, legs shaking somewhat. He pushed himself to his feet, swaying for a moment - god, his chest - then steadied himself. He moved a few steps over.
"The car?" He looked around. Where was the car? He moved to the bookshelf, looking desperately through books with titles like 'Interpretations of the Law' 'Ethics of the Courtroom', and 'How to leave behind a life of demon hunting'. He made a sound of frustration. "None of these are any good. None of these'll help." He thunked his head against one of the shelves, resting there, his eyes shut.
Dean pushed himself up behind him and scanned over the shelf himself. Journal, journal... He stopped at 'How to leave behind a life of demon hunting', paused, and pulled it off the shelf to look at the dust jacket.
"You read this crap?"
Dean tossed the book to the side took it upon himself to start trimming the collection of books.
"Only when it's raining," Sam said. A second later the heavens opened, and outside the small motel room, they could hear the water hitting the pavement.
Sam paused and stopped his search, staring out the window soundlessly.
Dean followed his gaze for a minute, looked down at the strip of six foil-wrapped condoms in his hand, and tossed those aside, too.
He walked over to the mini-fridge and started looking for a beer.
Sam walked slowly towards the windows, looking out at the torrential rain that was pouring down on to the poorly lit parking lot. Beyond the yellow street lights, there was nothing but darkness.
The world looked so small.
Jessica watched him from outside the window, but his eyes slid over her like water.
"God...." Sam grasped the shirt over his chest, bunching his fingers in it to make a fist. It felt like someone was dropping brick after brick down on to him.
"You know what you need?" Dean asked as he picked up a shotgun out of the fridge. He walked over to the bed and sat himself down, opened the gun up and picked up a dowel off the bed to start cleaning it. "You need..."
He never finished the sentence because the dowel got stuck in the shotgun and when he finally tugged it out and peered down the barrel a pair of beady little rat eyes were staring back out at him and he sat there transfixed in disgust and afraid to move (because the dirty little bugger would jump out on him), a shudder running up his spine.
"Need?" Sam turned, looking back at him. "I need..."
Sam tried to think, tried to get his mind to wrap around the concept that seemed to keep slipping away from him.
"Dei...sancti...No." He shook his head. "I need the journal. That's what I need; I need to find the journal..." He walked across the room and into the library. It was dusty and piles of books lay on every table, clearly the library staff hadn't been taking good care of the place.
Probably because they were all skeletons on the vaulted ceiling.
The rat jumped. Dean made an un-manly sound and fell out of the library chair. The rat went digging into the pile on the table behind him, its bald tail lashing around as it wiggled in between two books. Dean watched it, his lip twitching up in revulsion. He shook it off and picked himself up. He looked around the library, at all the books, at the skeletons.
"That's right. You need the journal. Whatta you go diggin' around in all this other stuff for?"
"I don't know. I mean..." His hand brushed down the dusty spine of an old, large book. "I thought I wanted it."
He walked through the long, tall isles of books, rats on the tops of the shelves, peering down at them.
He looked back at Dean. "Sometimes it feels good, you know?"
Dean was hanging pretty close to Sam's back and pretending like he was cool with shit while keeping an eye on the rats. God damn--with their little bug eyes, and their little overbites, and their filthy, tiny hands...
He flashed Sam a grin and waggled his eyebrows. "Anytime you wanna feel good, you let me hook you up."
Sam stopped walking, and looked back at his brother.
"I want to feel good." He asked, the pain he felt digging its claws in. "Please?"
Whenever Sam got that look about him--that needy, pleading look--it got Dean down in the stomach. Always had. It made it hard not to give him what he wanted. Or maybe a request like that got him a little bellow the stomach, in that primal brain that did most of the thinking for him most of the time. It was the same conclusion as always, though: Not here. Not now. Not Sam.
Dean threw a precursory glance around the library, grinned, and gave Sam a conspiratorial wink.
"Not exactly the right scene."
Sam sank down to his knees slowly, his back hunched over and he looked at his knees and the floor.
"You, too?" He asked quietly, no beginning to that statement that could possibly give away its meaning. The momentary hope fled him, the hope that his brother could do something to make it better.
The rats began to chew into a book entitled '1001 reasons I need to stop depending on my brother for everything.'
Dean frowned, hand on his hip, and tilted to the side a little trying to get a better look at Sam's face.
"What's wrong?"
He crouched down in front of him.
Sam looked up at his brother.
"You can't help me," he said, and the truth of that statement made the rats squeal with delight, and Sam felt like something had just pierced him through his chest.
He flopped back over, and the hoards of rodents began to descend from the bookshelves, crawling towards Sam, and he felt one crawling up his back, then a million.
Whoa! Whoa! Rats!
Dean grimaced a second as the rodents started advancing, his stomach dropping out under him, but he didn't think twice about lunging forward, about trying to knock the things off Sam's back. The two of them were crawling in rats.
"Sammy! Damn it...!"
His skin cold and crawling, he kept knocking them away. There were just too many.
The little things hissed at Dean as he hit them, rearing back. Eventually the tide of rodents seemed to stem, and they ran away from him, crawling up over the bookshelves, clinging to the edges all the way down, staring at him.
Dan was alone in the dark library.
He was on his hands and knees there on the floor, clammy and panting. He vomited, stomach-hot hospital food splashing on the marble floor, and then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, standing up and looking around.
"Sam!"
His voice echoed in the silent chamber.
Jessica looked at him from around the end of the dark shelves, and her blonde hair and white dress seemed to be the only light in the room.
"What you want isn't always what you get," she said, and then Dean woke up.
The first thing Dean thought, before the dream started coming back to him, was that he'd thrown up in his mouth a little and it tasted like crap. He swallowed the bile back, smacking his lips in distaste. When the dream started coming back to him, he pulled the IV out of his arm again and left it dangling. He headed for the ICU to check on Sam.
Nothing had changed. Sam lay on his bed, hooked up to all manner of machines, and he was silent and still. His brow was beaded with sweat though, despite the cold air of the hospital.
Dean had a bad feeling about this. Like Han Solo, in Star Wars, he wasn't all that in with the Force -- not as in as Sam sometimes seemed to be, anyway -- still, he had the instincts for the job he did and his instincts were telling him something was off. He checked Sam's vitals on the monitor and stood there staring at him a little while longer... but what it could be wasn't coming to him.
----
Sam knew Dean was gone. The minute he woke up, that shadow on his chest, he knew Dean was gone.
Somewhere else, he walked through his apartment, and he knew Jessica was gone.
In a motel room, he held onto the sill of the window, chanting the names of God, and he knew his father was gone.
The sky stayed dark.
----
Dean couldn't get back to sleep. He wandered around the hospital a little while, thinking about calling John, deciding a bad dream wasn't anything worth reporting. It'd seemed pretty real, nonetheless. And Jessica, at the end? What was he doing dreaming about Sam's girl? Sure, she was easy on the eyes. Maybe if he'd gotten to know her better she would have snuck into a dream or two, already. But Jessica was dead. Besides when she came up with Sam, Dean didn't much think about her.
----
She stood next to Sam's bed, watching her lover and his brother at the same time. Sam could see her, if only he'd wake up, but she couldn't do that for him. His brother couldn't see her, if he was awake, only if he was asleep, but he just kept walking.
She no longer had a heart with which to love. Her investment in this was not an emotion like that. She couldn't feel that. She could only feel a sense of spiritual love, of a need to fulfill her promises of love and care that she'd made. But spirits don't think like humans do, not in clear lines, not within a sense of time, and she could no longer see the walls that contained Sam and Dean as living creatures, as they had once contained her.
She had no way of helping. Luckily for her, the sensation of helplessness was also something she could no longer comprehend.
----
Dean crept back into his room, eventually, sliding back up on the less-than-comfortable bed. He was as tired as before he’d gone to sleep, but he’d gotten some more blood back and started to feel in fighting shape, at least. That was better than nothing. He stared at the ceiling and drummed on his legs and sang out loud to himself, and he watched some television on the little wall-mounted TV, and he eventually ate some breakfast while talking with Rachel Schiffer. It took awhile, but by late morning when he was watching TV again and halfway to bored out of his mind, he ended up dozing off.
----
She was standing there, in front of a door. Everywhere else, there was nothing but snow. But the sky was light. God it was light. There was no wall, no house, just a door, and she seemed to almost glow.
"Dean." She said, recognizing him, and it was the same tone that his mother had had, back in that house that he hated so much.
Dean looked at her warily, kind of skeptically. He was a little less asleep this time, a little more aware. He looked around him, the snow everywhere, the strange-lit sky.
"Where are we?"
Hadn't he been somewhere else? Somewhere, just a second ago... He already couldn't remember, and the setting was starting to feel natural.
She paused, because she knew she had to answer the question as clearly as she could, and it was very difficult for spirits to be clear about anything at all.
"We are where you are. In you." She touched the doorknob. "This...is the space that connects you to him."
Dean chuckled. That sounded pretty out there. (For one thing, Dean was pretty sure he looked like one of those all night adult toyshops on the inside, and neon lights everywhere, advertising beer.)
"An' why are you here?" A grin. "Not that I mind. Just, if this was my space, you'd be wearin’ less."
"Because I'm not your vision of Jessica." She said assuredly, stepping away from the door. "I am Jessica, and this is the only place I can talk to you." He was definitely getting a dream from the dead here.
"So, what, I've got the Shining, too, now?"
Dean laughed at that idea, but his laughter trailed off. Yeeeah, that wasn't too funny. He couldn't remember where he'd been when he was awake, what he'd been doing, and the details of his life... He could remember other dreams he'd had, though, and the most recent one was still chillingly fresh.
Jessica shook her head. Dean thought about it a second.
"Look, if this is 'real' then I... I need to get to Sam."
She nodded. "Yes, you do." She moved back to the door.
"You can always get to him. You're the only person who can." She stepped aside, leaving a path to it open for Dean. He was the only one who could open it, of course.
"It's dark in there."
Dean scoffed. "With my line of work? I'm not afraid of the dark." Just rats. And airplanes. And abandonment. And maybe baboons. Man... Something wrong with those monkeys.
He approached the door at his usual swagger, and gripped the knob and turned it without a second thought. If Sam was in there, it didn't matter what was in between them.
She watched him, and then stepped back, saying nothing else, and not hindering his progress from his own mind into Sam's.
The door opened for him without any trouble.
Dean flashed her a smile and nodded his thanks and stepped into the inky darkness without looking back.