" Hallelujah"
Mystic25
Summary: It starts and ends with this. Sam and Dean.
Rating: M for imagery, and language
A/N: I've been writing a few quick, one shot fics lately. And while they're not bad, I feel I need to get back to my roots of digging deep into the boys, which is angst/brotherhood.
A/N #2: I'd like to thank the conglomerate of Favorited YouTube videos of Sam and Dean for giving my inspiration. We did it baby!
xxxxxXxxxx
"No one needs to go where the river bends.."
~Matthew Barber "Where the River Bends"
"Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
~ "Broken Hallelujah"
xxxxxXxxxx
The sky was streaked with red tinted clouds like a bleeding wound. The breeze stood still over the heavily forested landscape like it was holding its breath.
A scattering of birds twittered overhead. But then, with the innate sense animals possessed when something was wrong, they sped away in their flight seconds before an inhuman wail exploded into the air, like the sky itself was screaming.
The noise was chased away by an even louder one, the sound of buck shots being fired one right after another. The low florescent green colored underbrush was blasted away like a bomb as two men tore through it. One running flat out at speeds that defied the torn, shredded condition that his legs were in. One with a long barreled hunting rifle strapped across his back, and a second poised in his hands.
The other, the one with the guns, continued to blast bullets at what was behind them, smoke billowed from the end of a heavy hunting rifle. The gun was pumped with each round, and expelled shell casings like golden rain onto the forest floor.
They dodged their way amongst evergreen trees older than then them and their father combined. After a quarter of a mile at this speed, exhaustion won out and dropped them both to the dirt and dead branches that reeked of rot.
"You get it?" From a hunched over position too compact for a man his size, Sam Winchester started up with a sweat streaked face at his brother. Blood ran down his legs, flowing in between the torn shreds of his skin. Underneath his right knee, the flesh was masticated and ripped away with a gleaming of white bone underneath.
Sam's brother, Dean, aimed the rifle in his arms and swept it in an arc across the trees. The woods had gone silent, which Dean didn't take for a good thing. Nature was never completely silent. The rifle still smoked in his hand, and was slick with blood that ran down his fingers. His left hand had a line of jagged teeth marks in the palm, and some of it had congealed to the rifle barrel by how tight he was holding it. A splatter of red ran from the middle of his left forearm to his elbow, dripping darkly from the shredded part of his jacket. His elbow burned red hot, and he could barely move it without knife like pain shooting up it. "I don't know," Dean said angrily, half to himself and half to Sam. He swore, his breath coming heavily out of him. "I got half the damn forest-"
"So you got it?" Sam threw back. Even through gritted teeth, the disbelief that his brother could miss such a massive, bulky creature, was heard.
"I said I don't know Sam," Another smoke of breath from Dean, that matched the rhythm of his frantic heartbeat. He finally took stock of his injuries, and braced his uninjured hand against the worst part of the laceration on his arm."Benny said we could kill it with a blow to the heart-"
"Benny said he's also be here to back us up Dean, so where the hell is he?-"
"Don't start that shit about Benny again Sam-!"
Dean was cut off when Sam gritted words became a full on scream.
Even with both hands gripping his lower leg, the blood from the jagged hole in Sam's leg puddled down amongst his fingers. Some of the blood was so dark red it was almost like chocolate, which meant it was deep arterial blood.
"Damnit Sammy!" Dean dropped the gun and knelt down next to Sam. In a blur of movements that took only about 5 seconds, Dean had removed his belt and cinched it above Sam's right knee, pulling as tight on the leather as he could.
Sam screamed, and writhed. He reached a long arm and gripped Dean's jacket, until his hand felt its way down to his injured arm. Sam used Dean's body weight as leverage, and pulled in two swift motions, which elicited a harsh 'pop' from Dean's injured arm.
"Fuck!" Dean swore rearing back, which caused both brothers to release each other in simultaneous abruptness. "What the fuck Sam?"
Dean writhed from the pain on his elbow, while Sam did the same on the ground from the agony in his leg. Their panting, a discordant song in the air.
"Fucking warn me next time!" Dean growled, moving his elbow. While it still hurt, it felt looser.
"Fine Dean, next I'll let your arm stay jacked up," Sam said as he gasped so heavily that he seemed to swallow his breath.
"Shut up asshole," Dean dropped back by Sam's shredded leg, and examined the wound. It was still bleeding, but it seemed to lessen under the tourniquet, at least a little bit. Which wasn't making the situation any better, because Dean could now clearly see patches of Sam's tibia peeking out from the torn flesh.
Dean slid out of his jacket, which wasn't easy, and involved a lot of swearing, and more swearing, but he finally managed to tear off his cotton under shirt, and ripped it to a long strip, and wrapped it around Sam's leg as a makeshift bandage. His left leg was bleeding and torn too, but the right leg bore the worse looking of the injury. Dean wrapped it as tightly as he could, then tightened his belt over the fabric.
Sam closed his eyes, and white knuckled handfuls of dirt, tiny half rotted twigs that had fallen amongst the dirt snapped in his curled fingers.
"Fuck!" Sam's swear echoed, and shook loose a group of birds from the unfathomably tall tree that sat a yard in front of them. He bit his lips until they bled and dribbled down his lower chin. The pain didn't let up, even after the wound was circulation cut off tight. It permeated through to his bones and out the other side of his leg. Sam swallowed down the vomit in his throat that came with knowing that it wasn't going to get better than this.
He forced his eyes open and stared at Dean. The pain made him feel high, dizzy. Heightened every color and line in the forest so he could see the tiny forms of ants legs crawling away with pieces of the bright green leaf on the felled tree branch next to him. He grunted a breath that scattered in the air like the birds. "Thanks."
"Yeah no problem," Dean said without any in fluctuation in his voice. He shouldered the green army bag with their weapons on his shoulder He kicked Sam's dirt encrusted boot with his, and when Sam snapped his eyes open at the sudden movement he reached an arm down. "We gotta find some place more camouflaged, "Come on."
Sam gripped Dean's good arm and was hauled to his feet. He almost dropped the second he tried to bear weight his legs. The adrenaline rush he experienced from running away from the creature had worn off. But Sam forced the pain to the back of his mind, and forced his body to raise his bad leg and walk.
It felt like walking on serrated knives.
xxxxXxxxx
It might have been a foxes warren they found. Dug into the side of a small hill naked of plants, hidden under a few well placed branches. It tripped Sam's bad leg and almost sent him tumbling face first into the hill. But at the last minute his hand and Dean's arm pulled him back up.
They had walked for almost a mile, neither of them talking, too exhausted to do more than focus on walking. But when Sam tripped on the hole dug in the rock, and Dean pulled him up and Sam made no attempt to walk anymore, Dean knew his brother was done. Even after year separated by Purgatory and another five months separated by anger, Dean still could read Sam's cues.
So Dean dropped the pack, and Sam just dropped, back against the vacant animal den. It was too small for a human being to squeeze through, so neither brother made any attempt to explore it.
Dean scrapped away dried grass and leaves in a small circular pattern in the ground then piled them in the center of the scrapped over area. He dug his aluminum Zippo lighter out of his pocket and ignited the pile, blowing on the small flame to get it to catch.
Sam's leg burned like fire, even sitting down it throbbed and pulsated. But he managed to scoot over and grabbed fallen sticks near him and throw them on top of the grass pile. Among these were the branches that covered up the entrance to the warren. Sam hoped that whatever creature lived here had truly abandoned it because the den was now completely visible to predators. The branches caught the flame, and split the wood with quiet crackles and pops.
The smoke would be a problem for the creature, but it would also be a way for Benny to track them easier. Dean didn't say it, because arguing about Benny with Sam like teenage girls wouldn't make either of them any less hurt or any less fucked.
The fire grew to a healthy orange under their tending, and after they were satisfied it would give them a few hours of a decent burn, they left it alone.
Dean took a swallow from the water in the canteen in his pack he filled before they started out, then tossed it to Sam.
"Thanks," Sam said again, drinking two healthy swallows from it, and wiped his lower lip, dried blood staining the sleeve of his canvas insulated jacket. "How ya holding up?" Sam couldn't help the question. Back when it was just them, without Benny, or even Cas, they used to ask such questions all the time.
"Same as you," Dean said. He dropped Sam's empty rifle by his feet. "Awesome." Dean then went back to stand in front of the fire. A three inch bowie knife was in his hand, and he let the blade grow red hot in the flame. He removed the blade and walked over to Sam with it. "But you were the one who said you missed the simple monster hunts."
Sam's hands fumbled on the belt and cloth wrapped around his lower right leg when he saw Dean approach. The trek had kept the wound from clotting properly, and when the cloth was pulled back rivulets of blood trickled from it.
Dean knelt next to Sam, red hot knife poised, he saw the image of the blade reflected back in Sam's pupils.
Sam moved his hands, and grabbed the dirt again. This was gonna hurt like a mother.
Dean lowered the flat of the blade and it sizzled against Sam's leg.
Sam screamed a lot of choices swears, smelling his burnt flesh. "I take it back!" He grunted and banged his head against the hill, a few clumps of dirt shook loose. "I'll take the mofo angels with their instant healing!"
"No takesey backsees Sam," Dean said as Sam blew out a painful breath, and he took that moment of distraction and rewrapped Sam's leg. He left the belt off because it could reopen the newly sealed wound. Once the leg was bound again, Dean left Sam and went back around the fire to their duffle bag and dug through it until he found the cigar box with their extra bullets stored inside. He picked up the hunting rifle abandoned on the ground and reloaded the gun, then tossed the bullet box to Sam.
Sam loaded the empty barrel of his gun until it was filled, then clicked it shut. While he did this, Dean took a flask from his pocket and drank from it. He didn't offer this to Sam, and Sam didn't request it.
The crackling of the fire filled the silence that words would've occupied. Dean tipped back the flask, shaking out the last few drops of alcohol.
"Did you ever see one of these things?" Sam asked after the silence had gone on for a stretch of a minute. "In Purgatory?"
Dean screwed the lid back on the flask, then stuck it back in the pocket of his jacket. "I saw a lot of things in Purgatory Sam." His voice was devil may care, but his eyes betrayed him.
"A simple yes would've fine Dean," Sam said.
"I didn't get a chance to catalog ever monster Sam, I was too busy ganking them."
"You know what," Sam snapped. "Never mind-"
"You asked the question Sam," Dean insisted using the flippant, angry tone he seemed to be using with Sam lately.
"Yeah well I wish I hadn't," Sam retaliated.
It wasn't even like the casual bickering they used to have when they first started hunting, or even the full on anger that came in the wake of Sam releasing Lucifer from the Cage. It was like they didn't even care anymore.
"You know what, screw you Sam," Dean said blowing out his emotion on a breath at his brother. He dropped the weapon's duffle at Sam's feet, glaring at his brother. "I'm going to go find a patch of nature and call on it." He slung his rifle up over his shoulder. "Sit here and be a dick."
He skulked off through the forest behind Sam's back, away from the direction where the creature had chased them.
Sam blew out a breath, and watched Dean leave.
xxxxXxxxx
Night blanketed itself over the red streaked clouds. The canopy of trees overhead blocked out most of the stars, which made dark, long, flickering shadows crawl up the tree branches. The air had gone frigid. The trees kept the cold wind from escaping.
Neither one of them were planning to spend the night in the woods, so they lacked so much as a blanket between them. Dean slept directly on the ground, one arm behind his head, the other, grasping the barrel of his rifle.
Sam sat up back against the animal den, holding to his own rifle. He was supposed to be keeping watch. But the nightfall had amped up the pain in his leg. It no longer throbbed with the acute newness of a fresh wound. It burned and felt scorching and hot underneath the makeshift bandage. The word 'infection' crawled into the back of Sam's mind, but he felt his skin flushing with a fever that was bleeding reality away like wet paint.
There was a scuffle as a small animal gave a last startled cry before it was picked up by a screech owl which cried out as it carried off its prey.
Sam crept his hands down to his leg, starting to unwind the bandage, to assess the wound. He didn't want to see it, if it hurt this much, he knew it was bad. But he'd checked his own wounds so many times, his hands seemed to move on their own.
A heavy snap came from somewhere off on his right, too heavy to be a popping stick in the fire. Sam raised his head, finger finding the trigger of his rifle.
The snap came again, louder.
Sam could barely grip the gun, but he raised it up into the blackness behind their fire.
A sharp pain pierced his leg making him jump. He looked down in time to see a gremlin sized creature with a forked tongue and covered in gray scales clawing its way up his injured leg.
It tore open the bandage with its claws, and seemed to stare, fascinated, by the blood.
Another creature like it crawled up the other side of his leg's dipping its sharp little hands in the blood puddle, playing in it.
These were Hell Creatures.
Sam had seen them scrabbling like insects around the bars of the Cage, forked tongues out, waiting to catch the drops of blood Lucifer had brought out from his skin as he flayed him alive.
His fevered mind tried to process it, how they had escaped from the deepest part of Hell. But then another one jumped on his knee, and dug its face right into the wound and started eating.
And Sam forgot to do anything but scream.
xxxxXxxxx
"Dean!" Benny cried out just as a werewolf, teeth bared, lunged at Dean.
Dean ducked, and felt the 'whoosh' of an impact that would've taken his head off. He reached around with the axe Benny had given him and brought it down hard on the Werewolf's chest.
The ax must have been tipped in silver, because the werewolf gave an ethereal, horrible wail and dropped onto the ground.
The wolf breathed shallow, low, weakly.
Dean stepped on its stomach, and plunged the ax head in deeper, splitting it in half right down the center of its chest, breaking through ribs, and its heart.
The werewolf stopped breathing after that.
Benny stepped over the rise covered in dead leaves, and yanked the ax out of the wolf carcass. It's body disintegrated to dust, and was blown away by a wind that came and picked it up.
"Where does that go?" Dean watched what was remained of the werewolf scatter away. "We're at the bottom; it's not like there's another level below Purgatory."
"Brother I've been here for near a 70 years, and I still don't know," Benny said as he wiped blood off the ax head. "Only thing I do know, is that a monster dies here, it stays dead." He handed the axe back to Dean.
Dean felt the weight of the ax back into his hand. It wasn't like any ax he'd ever seen, granted he'd never been much of a lumber jack ax wielding type. But this was big, handle as fat as a hand span and a foot long. The head was made of something that looked and felt like steel, but had killed more monsters than steel would have ever been able to do. For as big as it was, it was amazingly balanced like a sword, and Dean could wield it like it weighed virtually nothing.
"What about this way out?" Dean said to the Vampire in black leather, wearing a cabbie hat that never seemed to fall off his head even when killing other monsters.
Benny stared off into the distance. They were at the edge of a drop that was 20 feet wide. Beyond that were more trees that were so dense they blocked out the light from the sky.
"Over that way," Benny pointed towards the trees. "About thirty, maybe forty kilometers."
"I'm not an English man brother," Dean pointed out. "Can we talk that down to miles?"
"I haven't been an English man since 1930 Dean," Benny pointed out, giving him a knowing look before turning back to look at the tree line. "It's roughly 18 miles. Maybe a day's walk."
"Easy for you to say Flash Gordon," Dean returned. "I don't have vamp speed remember? Plus there is the added bonus of no one way over this crater here." He stared into the black empty hole that seemed to pull their eyes down too it like a vortex.
"Guess we'd have to build a bridge then Dean," Benny said. There was a hint of a smile on his face. Like he remembered the moments before he ran for his life in Purgatory. "Hunter and Hunted. Wicked name for a band don't you think?"
Dean shifted his weight and stone by his foot plummeted down a good 10 feet before it hit something below with a clunk and continued falling. "Especially the stunts." He didn't hear the stone land a second time. "You know if my brother were he'd call this a chasm," Purgatory left very little room for smiling, so it felt almost alien when a slight one pulled at his face. "Sammy was always a total nerd." Dean had no idea how long it had been since he had been blasted here. Like Hell, time in Purgatory was different. But when he mentioned Sam to Benny it was like it had only been a day ago that they had tried to take down Dick Roman and it had all gone sideways.
"You'll see him again Mate," Benny said with held the same kind of unquestionable, finality that Dean had heard from angels and other timeless beings.
A high pitched gruesome sounding scream blasted out of the trees from behind them. The gray white form of a woman with stringy white hair swooped down on them. Her marble white eyes were opened above an even wider mouth that was emitting the ghastly noise.
"Get down!" Benny screamed, dropping into a roll towards the right, as Dean moved left, just out of the way of the claws
The Banshee swooped back up in anger, and grabbed the back of Dean's jacket and hauled him up. Her spindly hand found his throat. Her face was skeletal thin, and she screamed at him with a mouth full of rotted teeth.
"Dean!" Benny was somewhere nearby sinking his fangs into the Banshee's flesh.
Dean managed to free his arm, and raised the ax striking her on the skull.
She roared and screamed louder.
xxxxxXxxxx
Dean shot awake. Purgatory blurred into the black reality of night. His hand gripped the trigger of rifle instinctively, taking aim.
The night was eerily quiet against the sounds of the fire. Dean still heard the Banshee's scream in his ears. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and checked his watch. He had been asleep for just under three hours. He stood up, using the rifle as leverage.
"Sam," Dean rounded the flickering fire, where Sam was leaning up against the fox den. "I got watch."
When Sam didn't say anything Dean drew closer and bumped his brown boot with his rifle. "Hey, you hearing me?"
The movement made Sam's head flop limply forward. The bandage on his leg was ripped open and his fingers were bloody, like he had torn at his own skin with his bare hands.
"Sam!" Dean dropped by his brother and shook his head. "Sammy!?" Dean took a look at the wound and swore. The leg was angry and red hot and was covered with flowing black blood like a that was streaked with foul smelling white pus. The creature's saliva must've had anticoagulants and been amped up with a cesspool of bacteria for infection to take hold so fast. With Sam being completely non responsive Dean's mind quickly set to blood poisoning and gangrene.
"Dean!"
Dean turned and saw Benny's silhouetted form standing right beside him. His leather jacket was gone, and the blue sweater was pockmarked with jagged holes like it had been bitten through.
"Where the fuck have you been?" Dean screamed at the Vampire.
"I had to dispatch the beast," Benny said, and Dean noticed dark red stains on his hands. "Took some doing. But he won't be eating blokes anymore." Benny came around to where Dean was crouched over Sam. "What happened?"
"Creature fucked up his leg," Dean pealed what was left of the bandage away completely from Sam's leg. "It's rotted through-"the smell of decaying flesh hit him like a truck. "Fuck!" Dean punched a hole into the fox den. "I can't do anything-"He said that last part like he'd been shot in the stomach.
Dean picked his belt up from where Sam hand flung it on the ground he and wrapped it right above his brother's knee.
The movement roused Sam into consciousness.
"Dean?" Sam's voice was grainy and thick.
"Hey, Sam, Sammy," Dean stopped for a moment seeing Sam regain consciousness. "I need you to hang in there for me okay?" He cinched the belt as tight as it would go.
Sam winced at the pain the leather inflicted on his masticated flesh. "Dean, what's going on?"
Dean moved away from Sam, pulling something out of the weapon's duffle lying by Sam's body. He brought the 8 inch machete over to the fire, and thrust its blade into the flames.
Benny followed him to the fire and watched him as he took the red hot blade out of the fire. "What are your plans for that?"
"Don't act like you don't know." Dean said. The words were rough and harsh sounding, but from nothing but pain. "Look man, I'm gonna need your help. Sam's not gonna be passive about this-"
"Dean-," Benny took Dean's arm with the knife held in it. "My venom, sometimes it can heal things, give me a shot to try-"
"I'm not gonna lose Sam on a 'sometimes' Benny," Dean's breath blew through the wind like a ghost that escaped into the air.
Dean moved away from the Vampire, and dropped in front of Sam.
Sam gaze was sluggish for a moment, trying to discern what was happening. But then he realized what Dean was holding in his hand, the sharp edge of the machete blade caught the light of the fire. "Dean –what are you doing?"
"The infection's bad, man" Dean braced his knee against the ground and cinched the leather tighter. He cut a piece of the belt and folded it over three times.
When he raised his eyes to Sam, the look was devastated.
Sam's look melted from confusion into total bomb dropped shock. "What?-No- Dean!" His words were muffled when Dean shoved the belt into his mouth.
Sam tried to reach up and remove the leather, but Benny had crept up silently behind Sam, and held his arms down with a super strong grip on his wrists.
Dean poised the knife right below Sam's knee. His look to his brother was completely devastated. "I'm sorry-"
Sam struggled and flailed, and spat the leather out of his mouth, trying to fight Benny's hands off his body. But the Vampire possessed too much strength.
"No,Dean don't!"
Sam screamed like a baying animal, and it seemed to snap Dean's guts apart one sinew at a time. "I'm so sorry Sammy-" He had always been willing to die for his brother. But this was something else. He had to be willing to do something like this, this was much harder than death.
"Dean!" Sam struggled and fought with an act of desperation.
Dean poised the knife a mere centimeter above Sam's skin, his body revolted against what he was about to do, he tried to drown it out. He moved the knife down-
"No-no, Don't do this, Dean, you can't-please don't do this! Dean! Please don't do this-" Sam's voice became a jagged sob. "please don't do this!-"
Dean lost his grip on the knife, it clattered to the ground "Okay!" Okay, damnit! Okay!" His scream was torn. He breathed in and out like screeching metal. He grabbed at Sam's neck, feeling the thick congealing of sweat. He couldn't do it, he couldn't do it. He was a fucking coward, but Sam was screaming.
Benny stared at the congealed blood on Sam's leg like it was chocolate syrup. He let go of Sam's shoulders and reached and took the machete and sliced a long gash open in his own arm. He brought the blade back up, dripping with his blood. He placed the flat of the blade against Sam's leg.
The effect was instantaneous, Sam screamed like something was tearing him apart.
"I've got to get it all into his wound, It's ain't gonna be pretty."Benny slid the tip blade down into Sam's wounds, a good two inches in, and moved it down inside the flesh.
Sam reared and screamed louder, and as strong as Benny was, Sam almost managed to buck him off.
"Hold him down for bleeding sake!" Benny screamed as he bit his arm again, drawing out more of his blood from his hand. He made a fist and let the blood pool into his palm, then pressed it flat against Sam's leg.
Sam screamed like he hadn't done since he'd been in hell. The pure animalistic scream of something being tortured.
Dean pinned Sam down, sitting on his chest, and held both his arms down to the forest floor. "Sam, Sam! Take it easy, you got this–-"
"Dean, please, " Sam could see the little Demon creatures crawling up his leg, eating him. "Please, don't let me die!"
"You're not dying man!" Dean screamed. "I got this-Dean felt Sam's pulse throbbing out of the veins bulging in his arms. "I got you –you understand?" A tear shook from Dean, then another, they dripped on Sam's hands and mixed into the blood still on Sam's fingers.
This went on for two minutes, three, four. Sam's struggles became weaker, but his screaming didn't. But Dean didn't cover his ears,he bit his tongue until it bled and listened to it all, and continued to hold Sam down.
When it was done Benny stood up and staggered over to the nearest tree. He dropped the machete and took gulp fulls of air, like a crack addict who had resisted one of the biggest hits of all times.
"Did it work?!" Dean shouted after the retreating figure of the Vampire.
"See for yourself," Benny called back without turning back around, starring off into the night, his dead breath billowed in the air.
Dean turned and dared a look down at Sam's lower leg. Blood still stained the fabric of his jeans, and there was still a jagged gash, but the pus had dissipated, and the blood was not actively flowing anymore. He climbed off of Sam and palmed his lower leg.
Sam's eyes opened more and he sat up, feeling Dean's hand on his lower leg. It still throbbed, but it was no longer a life threatening throb. "Dean?"
Dean turned his attention away from his leg and looked up to meet his brother's eyes. The fever seemed to be clearing away like a storm being swept away. "Sammy you with me?"
Sam nodded. He was still breathing hard. "Yeah." He gripped the inside of Dean's elbow. His breathed hard and rough in his ears
Dean gripped Sam's elbow back then hugged him hard, smelling his brother's blood.
The fire crackled, the air smelt of earth and blood.
The sky was beginning to split into red again, red and orange and yellow as the daytime crept back over the land.
xxxxXxxxx
End.
A few quick things:
While it may seem like a presto change healing of Sam's injuries for Benny to fix him, I could come up with no other way to save him besides Dean's near amputation. Once gangrene takes hold, its too late to save the limb, and if something isn't done the infection can spread to the heart and other organs.
The monster that nearly took down the boys was not identified because it was not the focus, the focus was the aftermath of such an attack.
R/R Please.
Mystic