For: Poisontaster
Betaed by: Jebbypal, whom scientists have proven to be made of pure fantabulous. Any mistakes are entirely mine.
Note: This is a sequel to "Thousand Ways To Bleed" and really, really in no way at all stands alone.

Hours later, Sam opens his eyes.

"Go back to sleep."

Washed-out light crawls around the edges of the curtains and Dean's just a twilight shadow that blends into both the chair he's slouched in and the journal in his hands.

The bed creaks as Sam rolls onto his side and somewhere under the mattress a spring gives a dull thud of protest. "That's creepy, Dean."

The shadow looks up and he can just make out the curve of a smile. "Thank you, Miss Cleo."

He'd throw a pillow, but they're so hard he's not sure it wouldn't crack the window if he missed. "You slept yet?"

Dean flips the journal closed. As closed as it can get. "Uh huh."

"Sure, those five minutes between cleaning your guns and sharpening your knives." Sam can't remember the last time he saw Dean sleep, but of the things he can't remember, it ranks low.

The bed shudders again as he twists onto his back.

The ceiling is all cracks and stains; the outlines of the individual ceiling tiles only accent the dilapidation. He can make out a cow and a butterfly in the browned water marks. Maybe a cow with wings. Rorschach for the concussed insomniac.

Dean's quiet for a beat, two, then the chair creaks. "Headache?" He sounds bored, but he isn't. When Dean's really bored, he never sounds it - he just moves on. But it's all repetition, now.

Yes. "No, slept it off."

"Anything coming back?"

No. "Bits. Not enough."

"Give it some time, you got dinged pretty good. Swear you didn't miss anything. Violence, strong language..." Dean keeps talking, Sam tunes out. It's variations on a theme and nothing ever matches what little he remembers. Same questions, same answers. Hungry? Thirsty? He can answer by rote. "- nightmare?"

"Yes. No. What?" Bastard changed the order.

A soft snort. "Which one?"

You shot me. Again. And that was the best part. Sam's hand is half-way to his mouth before he notices, lets it fall again. "Basement, or a cave or something. What time is it?"

Dean leans forward to read the watch on Sam's out-flung wrist. "Five to twelve."

Sam blinks against the complete lack of the noon-day sun and mentally flips the clock face the right way up. "Or twenty-five past five."

"Or twenty-five past five.", Dean concedes.

"You know I'm never going to fall for that, right?"

"Man's got to have hope."

Sam guesses Dean should know. He sits up, tensing against a pain he's always expecting, but that never comes. "Find anything else on the possession?"

"Still looks like an 'Anneliese Michel' deal. Police reports back up the paper - Mom and Pop go outside to talk," Dean's mouth twists up at the corner, "argue. Come back in, the house is trashed and their little nine-year-old bundle of joy's cussin' them and their 'desert god' out in half a dozen languages. They've been able to identify English, Latin and Sanskrit so far. I figured maybe just a bad case of Poltergeist, but -"

"Not with the tongues thing, right. 'Desert god' ... that's Old Old Testament. Omnis immundus spiritus..." Idly he tries to work out at what point demon lore became the only thing so reassuringly real, gives it up before the barrel of Dean's gun looks any more appetizing. "Anything else?"

"The police want to bring an analyst in." Dean pauses and the light catches and sharpens his sudden grin. "On the parents."

"The parents?" Sam lets his confusion show, it's close enough to interest to work.

"Reading between the lines, I'm guessing they're exhibiting some of the same symptoms."

Now he understands the grin and remembers some epic arguments they played spectators for as kids. Finds a grin of his own feels better than it has in what seems like forever. "Blood tie; it's using them as an anchor. Never tell Jim."

"Are you kidding? I'm never getting between Dad and Jim on a point of lore." Dean's grin fades around the edges. "It's going to be a hell of a thing getting it out. Blood's a bitch."

"What date's the paper?"

Dean passes it over. "Last week. Why?"

Sam's eyes flick over the other articles; all as familiar as a memory, but an old one. Like the ache in an old break. "I guess it feels longer."

"That's what happens when you don't sleep."

"Thanks, Grandma."

"Get a hair cut," Dean jibes back, the pattern familiar and something like comforting. Dean stands slowly and pulls his jacket off the table, stretches out the night with a wince. "I'm getting some coffee, you want any?"

Sam manages keep from making any comments about the wisdom of sitting in a chair for hours and just shakes his head. "No, I'm good."

"Hungry?"

Back to the rote. He shrugs off the cursory concern; it's just the last bullet point on Dean's list. "No. Thanks."

"Yeah, whatever."

He'd swear he doesn't care about much more than the pain dancing behind his eyes and the black void where some of his life used to be, but something that never seems to stop figuring and weighing and tallying finally connects enough dots from the 'Anneliese' to prompt a question "Who are 'they'?"

Dean's head cants back with only a flicker of confusion before guileless understanding replaces it. "Them. You know, the guys."

Sam rolls his eyes and flattens his expression. "'They' identified some languages, which 'They'?"

"Doesn't say, but I'm going to guess they've got religion."

"Young priest and an old priest, huh?"

"Maybe a cute nun and an old Priest. That was a good show."

The door clicks shut and Dean's gone.

It's getting lighter outside, light enough to see the faded prints on the drapes. Soon it will be cold and too bright and they'll be able to see their breath in the air. When they're done here, Sam's going to insist they go South.

In a minute, he'll go take a shower. Then he'll try and find something to wear that doesn't smell like the laundry bag and he'll throw the shreds of the nightmare onto the shifting heap at the back of his mind.

Maybe a minute and a half. Two, max.

Twenty minutes later, he guesses, he's skipped the shower and is pulling on a t-shirt that's clean only in comparison to everything else when the door opens, a winter wind blowing January and Dean back into the room.

The cold bites and Sam reaches for his hoodie. By the time he's done navigating head and arms, there's a Starbucks latte being waved in front of his face.

He takes it automatically. "I said I didn't want one."

Dean's eyebrow lifts. "So?"

It's a winning argument. He pries off the lid and takes a sip, letting the coffee burn all the way down. "We heading out?"

"Unless you've developed some deep sentimental attachment to Someplace, USA."

He smiles until he's sure it will hold and then he stands. "Really haven't."

Had to say that for north of nowhere - it was scenic.

By the time they've been on the road long enough for too cold and too bright to really set in, the wind is shifting in lulls and gusts that occasionally carries the smell of burning into the car. "That's not us, right?" Sam wrinkles his nose and winds down the window further to be sure.

Sam follows Dean's gaze as it flickers from the road to the right and can see a faint haze on the horizon now he's looking for it. "What happened?"

"It's a touching gas meets spark story set against the back drop of a Christmas parade gone mad. Personally, I think I'll wait for the TV movie."

A nightmare uncoils in the back of Sam's mind and flickers, casting patterns like blood splatter against the back of his eyelids. Now that the scent's in the car he can't seem to shake it, as if it's clinging to them. "Just an accident or...?"

"Just an accident."

"You sure? Maybe we should-"

"I'm sure, Sam." Dean swallows back something sharper. Pity. It's got to be better than this careful chasm he's been widening since Sam picked up an interesting head wound and a twelve hour gap. "I asked around. Nothing there for us, and Miss Exorcist 2006 is waiting."

Sam hunches further down and wonders if it would have killed the designers to give the Impala one more inch of leg room. Dad promised they'd get a new car when he'd topped 6' 2'', but they hadn't. Dean just told him it was his own fault for being freakishly tall.

He turns and snags the paper from the back, rescuing it from sliding off the seat and into the debris of a hundred hunts on the floor. He flips through the pages until a grainy picture of a smiling girl with curled blond hair stills his hand. "I know her."

"Stanford?"

"In my dreams." He lets his finger touch her face, watches it jerk back as if the Winter Queen was fire.

Dean's head turns just enough to see. "Girl looking like that, I believe you."

He smacks Dean's shoulder more from habit than irritation and tries to bring the pictures in his mind into focus if not sense. A boy and a girl. Two girls. And so much blood. "I mean I think she was in my dream last night. Does she have a ... a brother or something?"

"How should I know?"

He turns the paper so Dean can see the article out the corner of his eye. "She was meant to be in the Christmas parade."

"Lucky for her she wasn't then, huh?"

"We should go back."

"How many different ways can I say 'I checked it out'?" Dean's head turns and if he way layering on nonchalance any more Sam would call him a liar out of general principles. "Seriously, I'm willing to find out just to pass the time. I can think of five ways right now and I'm not even trying. You had a nightmare, maybe you smelled the smoke or something."

"Two hours. We go in, we take a look, we leave."

"And then we're two hours too late to help the kid, and her parents, and you're guilt-tripping for a week. No, thanks. You still want to take a look; we can come back when we're done."

It's impossible to hunch down any further, so Sam settles for turning towards the window and he doesn't have to see Dean's face to know he's rolling his eyes. "Fine."

He flips through the journal until the words and pictures blur into nothing at all.

And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough'.

His eyes are open and he's reaching for something and then he's finally awake, with Dean's arm across his chest stopping him from trying to claw free of the car by way of the wind-shield. The Impala swerves sickeningly and recovers almost as badly before finally slamming to a halt on the side of the road.

"Jesus. What?" Dean cuts the engine and drops his arm. His eyes are wide and black, shadows in finger print bruises under them. Sam wonders if he looks as pale.

Sam drags his hand over his mouth. "Tell me again."

"Tell you what again?"

"What happened?"

Taking a breath and shaking his head, Dean raises his hands and drops them back on the wheel. "We were doing a little exterminating at the crypt. You hit your head. I got us a room at the motel." Dean's fingers tap a beat slowly on the steering wheel, but he hasn't turned any music on. Sam guesses there are small mercies after all. "You remembering something?" Dean finally asks.

"I don't know. It's stuff that doesn't make sense, I just ..." He closes his eyes again and feels his forehead furrowing. Without Jess to smooth the frown away, maybe he'll look like an old man when he's thirty after all.

"Talk to me. You're supposed to talk, right?" Dean asks.

Dean's smile is thin and crooked, but something has relaxed and Sam lets himself do the same. "That's coma patients, and they don't do much talking as a rule."

"Well, there was that one-"

"As a rule," Sam says, cutting Dean off. "I remember smoke-"

"Told you-"

"- and darkness. And the girl."

"And?"

"That's it." Sure, now that he says it out loud.

"You don't try exiting a moving vehicle the hard way for smoke, darkness and a girl."

"Shakespeare."

Any hope he had of Dean taking him seriously disappears in a smirk. "For Shakespeare, maybe. The crypts were pretty dark and she's a looker, but they didn't exactly break any moulds making her. You've seen a hundred girls like that and if you haven't, you need to get out more."

Sam licks his lips and doesn't know why he has to keep pushing but he does. "Dean, we have to-"

Amusement is gone and the chasm has become an abyss. "If the next words out of your mouth are 'go back', I will shoot you."

As mild as the tone is, Sam can't help his flinch and he can't help noticing Dean's mouth tighten. All he can do is look away and try to find a little comfort in the irony of trying to forget.

Work helps. He drags the hair out of his eyes and looks down at his scrawled out notes. "Blood possession probably works a lot like blood magic. If we can cleanse the parents and make sure no other relatives visit, it won't have anywhere else to go." He knows he sounds sullen but Sam supposes it's better than lost.

"Okay, we can work with that. But we'll need to move quick afterwards, forcing it from the parents back into just the kid will be like trying to cram a tank into a garage."

This is new and despite himself Sam is interested now. "How you know this stuff?"

"Natural talent, Sammy." Deans eyes track to his, roll at the lack of amusement they find and flicker back to the road. "And I was actually listening when Dad and Jim were arguing."

"What will it do? If we force it back."

"Depends how bad it wants to be there. Might vacate, might start eating her from the inside out to make some room. Blood runs out, there's always something else."

He nods. "I'll call Jim when we get there, see if he's got anything that'll help us."

"It's a plan. Go back to sleep," Dean turns the engine and they pull onto the empty highway again.

Silence stretches out thin like cat gut and the mile markers have been his version of sheep since he was old enough to count.

"I stopped counting."

It's been a long time, the smell of smoke has been replaced with the smell of city and there's no haze of sunlight beyond his closed eyelids, just more darkness. He can hear other engines. People. Life.

They're not driving fast, the car moving in the familiar speed-slow rhythm of Dean searching for an address. If he opens his eyes, Suburbia and all its demons will be waiting. He doesn't have to ask. He doesn't want to ask.

Maybe he needs to.

"Dean?"

"Mm?"

"Blood magic."

"What about it?"

"What do you do when the blood runs out?"

Dean's breathing is slow and hollow and Sam refuses to open his eyes.

"You find something else."