So I've never done this before, but this is a rewrite of an earlier story called Hexes. It's straight hurt/comfort Sammy whump, and features Ellis, from Marking the Soul. Although this takes place AFTER that fic, once I wrote Marking the Soul I felt like I did Ellie a disservice in the original Hexes. In no way is Marking the Soul required to understand this fic, but if you are curious about Ellis and Dean's backstory, I recommend looking it over. I'm leaving up Hexes in it's original form because I hate it when writers take down a story I was fond of. So here we go...on to the reboot. Thanks for reading and as always I love reviews.

"I'm not sure, Sam." Dean ducked under an exposed beam and swung his flashlight around in a wide arc. "This isn't the usual witchy M.O. You know? They don't crawl around in creepy basements. Half the time, they live in suburban soccer mom environments. "

"I'm telling you Dean, she's here." Sam replied firmly. "I can feel it."

Sam stepped over the rubble in the old building and kept his gun drawn. They stepped into the hallway of the abandoned hospital and Sam had the brief thought that he hoped there was no asbestos in the crumbling plaster, then thought to himself, of course there is, followed by: our life is fucked anyway. Who cares?

He heard chanting from one of the rooms to his right and motioned to his brother. Dean nodded and pulled ahead. They swung into the doorway and there she was, someone not too old, but haggard by all the black magic she had been using. She stopped her incantation to look at Dean and then blurted out the rest. Dean pulled the trigger, but she waved a hand and the shot swung wide like someone had kicked his hand.

Sam drew in behind him as the scrying bowl before her began to smoke, the spell's energy building. She hissed and gestured the power toward him with her hand just as Sam pulled the trigger. He hit her exactly as whatever spell hit him.

Dean bolted ahead as she fell with the gunshot and kicked over the contents of her altar. The building spell fizzled out.

He looked up. "Sam, you okay?"

Sam's young face looked a little dazed. He'd put a bullet through her and even though she was not truly human anymore, it was the first time he'd done so. Killing had become common place to Dean, but since he'd been in Stanford it wasn't natural at all to Sam.

"Yeah. Yeah." Sam snapped to himself and began to move. "She hit me with something, stunned me a little is all."

Dean raised an eyebrow and looked at him appraisingly. "You okay? What did she hit you with?"

"I don't know." Sam responded. "I...I feel okay."

A moment later, he wasn't. A bolt of pain shot through him and he crumbled with it.

"Sammy!" Dean shoved his gun the waistband of his jeans and ran to his brother to catch him before he hit the cement. "What's wrong? Sam?"

Ellis Parnecki shoved the last pan into the dishwasher and kicked it closed. She glared at it like it had done something to offend her. In fact, her efforts of trying to cram all the pots and pans and silverware into it had offended her. She turned it on and the phone rang. "Oh come on!"

She belatedly realized she'd forgotten to put in any dish detergent and swore as the phone rang again. Ellis hit the off button and grabbed the wireless house phone. "Hello?"

"Ellis?" The voice at the other end was a bit breathless.

"Yeah." She said, her mind racing to put together where she knew the voice.

"Ellis, it's Dean Winchester."

"Dean!" She exclaimed, then paused, as she analyzed the anxiety in his tone. "What's wrong? Is John..." her heart began to hammer. She hadn't heard from Dean in about a year. If he was calling her at this time of night...

"It's not Dad." There was a pause. "Ellis, it's Sammy. He's..."he broke off again. "Hurt. He got whammied by a witch and..." she could tell he was having a hard time verbalizing what was going on. Dean had never been a man of many words, like his father. "We're about an hour out from your place...can I come there?"

"Of course you can, Dean. I-"

"Thanks." He hung up.

Ellis clicked the end button and missed the days of being able to vent her frustrations by slamming down the receiver on rotary phones.

Ellis heard the loud low growl of the engine of Dean's car before she saw it pull into the drive. She nudged one of her cats away from the front door and opened it.

Dean stepped out from the driver's side and strode over to the passenger's door. It had been a long time since she'd seen him. A year maybe. He had John's old leather jacket on. It was oversized for him. It made her miss his father with a sudden pang.

The cat tried to dart out the door and Ellis blocked it with her foot and picked up the protesting orange tabby. She deposited it in the bathroom and slammed the door, which didn't close completely because of the crappy jammed doorhandle. She ignored it, hoping she had telegraphed her displeasure. By the time she turned back, Dean was halfway up the porch, buried under the burden of his brother.

So this was Sam. This was the force that had torn the Winchester family apart when he'd opted for Stanford instead of the life his father had planned for him. He had his arm slung over Dean's shoulders, his blue sneakered feet shuffling along the ground, too weak to hold up his head. It leaned against Dean's limply, his face obscured by a fringe of bangs that fell over his eyes.

Dean paused and looked up at her, his soft eyes full of worry. "Hi Ellis."

Her heart skipped a beat just as it had the first time she'd ever seen him in tow with his father-all charisma and charm. She approached him, reaching out a hand to Sam. "What happened?"

Dean groaned and shifted the weight. "He's really hurt."

"Bring him in."

Dean staggered with Sam to the guest bedroom off the living room and let him flop down on the mattress, holding his own lower back with a grimace. "Goddamn, he's heavy."

Sam curled onto his side with a moan.

Ellis knelt next to him and looked at his face. A flash of that same face played through her head, his eyes closed, cradled by his crying brother...she pushed it aside.

Sam's cheeks were flushed, his breathing erratic. Ellis looked to Dean. "Dean where is John? Why isn't he helping you?"

Dean hesitated. "Dad's gone."

She felt her stomach drop. "Gone where?"

"He's just gone...I..." he paused. "Can we talk about this later?"

She nodded. "Okay, I have to know exactly what happened."

She ventured to press her hand to Sam's high forehead. "He's running a fever."

"We were tracking a witch...Sam interrupted her spell and she turned the power on him I think. He was just fine one second and the next he's buckled to the floor, yelling."

Dean ran a hand through his shortly cropped hair and she could see the tell tale tremble as he moved.

She ventured to touch his knee from her spot on the floor. "It's okay."

Dean swallowed and nodded. "He's...I don't know what to do...can you help him?"

"It would sure be nice if I knew what spell she was using."

Dean shook his head. "I don't know."

"What are his symptoms?" She stayed kneeling and pressed her fingers to Sam's pulse point on his wrist.

Dean shook his head, looking down at them. "Pain? Stomach pain. He's really uncomfortable..." Dean himself looked like he was in a great amount of discomfort as he described it. Fever, I guess. He's ...he can hardly talk. He seems pretty disoriented...I don't know what to do, Ellis!"

"I know, honey. Let me look at him."

Sam looked almost like a child despite the fact that he was so tall, his long limbs were almost hanging over the edge of the bed. His boyish features pulled into a grimace and his breathing hitched as Ellie layed her hands on him. She cupped him behind the neck, her palm in contact with his too warm skin at the base of his skull under his thick hair, and her other gently on his forehead.

Sam whimpered. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the feel of him. Sam showed up in her mind's eye as a blip of pain, wrapped around and around itself. She could almost feel the taint of the Magic in him. The hex trying to dim his light. She tried to discern what would break the spell, what could soothe the young man. Images started to swirl and Ellis gritted her teeth, her mind desperately thinking no, no, no. Not now. Not a vision.

But it came. The same images she'd seen all those years ago when she'd first touched Dean. Dean clutching Sam's lifeless body, the boyish features slack and still. The Impala outside a twisted wreck. And things she hadn't seen before... Sam broken and lonely alone in a motel room. Sam with a dark haired woman, tangled in passion...

Ellis broke away and almost fell on her ass.

Dean reached down to grab her. "Easy!" He said. "You okay?"

She nodded." Yeah... the spell." She paused trying to sort through the tangle of information. "It feels Celtic in origin. I have some books I can consult to try and puzzle out what we need. Stay here with him."

She stood up, her 40 odd years making the task a little stiffer than she wanted it to be.

"Dean?"

"Yep. Here, Sam."

Sam opened his eyes and tried to register where he was. The last thing he recalled had been an abandoned basement. He was drained and confused and in so much throbbingly dull pain he couldn't think straight.

"Where...are...we?"

"We're at a friends house. We're safe, okay."

"Kay..." Sam drew his knees closer to his chest, fighting the urge to go completely fetal. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave. Stay. Kay?"

His brother's lip turned up into a humorless smile. "Yeah buddy. Staying."

tbc...