"Crazy Stupid – Love"
Mystic25
Summary: Sam has seen through the cracks, but he's never talked about what he sees – he doesn't know how.
Rating: M for violent scenes, and other imagery.
A/N: This was inspired by that small clip I saw of Sam unshaven, on a gurney, looking like he broke. This will be raw, but it is not macabre. It is love.
xxxxXxxx
"This is for one last day in the shadows, and to know a brother's love."
-Thriving Ivory "Angels on the Moon."
"You're my weakness Sam, you are, and I'm yours."
-Dean Winchester "No Rest for the Wicked"
xxxxXxxxx
"I don't know what else to say," the doctor's voice is harried, whispering to the nurse, in an alleged side bar as they stand next to their patient, a giant of a man, over six feet wearing a thin cotton hospital gown, a weed of a beard starting to form on his face.
The room is gray concrete, overly bright halogen lights, smells like surgical antiseptic, and urine.
The doctor flips through the paper chart – "paranoid schizophrenic." it reads in neat clinical handwriting, his handwriting, underneath it a grocery list of anti psychotic meds he's ordered, Haldol, Depakote, the latter on hold, should he become combative. "He's a unique case."
The nurse is beside the man's bedside, raising it up so that he is sitting up, if not under his own power. He is strapped to the bed in hard restraints 4 points, and one on his waist – the leather kind banned back in the 1970's as "inhumane" unless dealing with an extremely combative patient.
Sam Winchester seemed like neither, at least not now. He was docile, almost catatonic, with the Atavin in his system, the Depakote swallowed. But, it was a drug induced calm – he had thrashed around not three hours ago, screaming like he was being torn apart, non syllables, except for one word, a name:
Dean.
Dean Winchester, Sam's only living relative. Who brought him in here, escorted by police. Something about Sam freaking out in the middle of a gas station, talking to the air, waving a gun around, nearly taking out the clerk and a patron.
48 Hour Forced Psych hold. She had told this to his brother, who stood there, jaw clenched like he would bite it to dust, watching his brother thrash and groan, no words, just that ungodly keening coming from him.
It took three nurses to hold Sam down, he was a force of almost raw muscle, the Ativan shot directly into his Carotid – his brother watching like he wanted to run and stop them, or vomit.
That was two hours ago. Dean had left after Sam had been successfully sedated, mumbling about getting air. His eyes looked so defeated, torn, as he watched his brother fade to listlessness in front of him. But he didn't move to approach him, he left.
Pam thought about this as she raised a cup with a straw to Sam's dry cracked lips. She thought Dean was cruel, a horrible person to abandon his brother. Crazy wasn't a disease, it was a tragedy. This was a young man, healthy, strong – broken by something that left his eyes so empty it was like staring agony in the face.
This was a man who needed someone to stand him up, because he didn't remember how to do it himself. He needed that bastard who left him here alone.
She touched the straw to Sam's lips.
He shied from it, "Dean-"
The words were torn, sad, wanting.
Pam bit her lip, feeling the pain from that single calling. "He'll come back," She reassured in a soothing word, coaxing Sam into swallowing. He thankfully did, because otherwise he'd be on bolus enemas and more IV's to be hydrated, and she wanted to preserve as much dignity as she could for him.
Dr. Evans says nothing to her declaration. He's seen countless cases of relatives who simply dump their family off when they are admitted for psych holds. Family through thick and thin, everything except crazy.
He doesn't want to feel like this – like one of those classic Dick Doctors – but it's been repeated over and over again within these walls over his 15 years here. "I want neuro checks every 10 minutes – and if he gets combative again," he stares at Pam to make sure she hears him. "-I've got Haldol on order."
It feels like someone is about to shoot a healthy young dog – Sam should be pulsating life, not strapped down, drugged to oblivion from it.
"Yes Sir," Pam says, and is surprised when Dr. Evans squeezes her shoulder, like he is apologizing for giving such an order. He hands her the chart, and she watches him leave, then her eyes move back to Sam.
He's diaphoretic, it looks like he's been dunked in a vat of sweat, his hair is flaccid dull. She does a capillary refill check on his limbs, makes sure he's still got circulation in the tied down appendages.
"You probably were hoping for a better date huh?" Pam talked to every patient, even the unresponsive ones. Sam was a good looking man, she wasn't going to treat him like an old vegetable in the bin. "More wine, candles?" She checked his catheter, catching sight of him watching her when she made sure tubing remained patent – the only way she could describe it was – agony. Like how could it have come down to this, how was he here?
Pam bit her lip again. But she met Sam's eyes, her sadness meeting his. "I'm sorry. It'll come out okay?" She covered his bare legs with the sheet. "You want some more water? Or-" There was no television in the Psych Ward. Too much of a risk for suicidal patients to do things with the glass and the wires. No furniture either except for the bed, because of that same risk.
"Dean-"
That name again. Like it was friend, a brother, an everything all rolled into one. And it wasn't here when it was needed.
"Sam-" Pam hovered a hand of Sam's arm, resting it briefly there."I'm sorry-he's not here." She was running out of things to say. She wasn't all that this Dean was to his brother. She wasn't anything compared to him. She had no idea what brought Sam here, she didn't want to know. Because it had to be horrible, to turn such a strong man so weak. She could only apologize uselessly.
"It's so hot-," Sam looked with unseeing eyes at Pam, unseeing, because all they saw was pain.
Pam checked Sam's forehead for fever, his skin was clammy and almost ice cold. A tympanic temperature reading in his ear confirmed no temperature. But, she ran an rag wet in the wash basin by his bed over his forehead anyway. Because Sam believed it was hot, and a belief held as much conviction as reality sometimes.
"It's dark-" Sam's words rumbled on the undercurrent of a tremble. "It's so dark here-"the tremble breaks free, becomes something that breaks tears from eyes sightless to anything but delusions. "Dean-" Sam gasps, "he's here. He's here!" Sam rasps in a terrifying, grating whisper, like a man possessed. He thrashes in his restraints, hard tugging yanks that will bruise, that drip blood down his arms.
It makes Pam reach for the prefilled syringe of Haldol on the tray, it was enough to incompassitate Sam for hours. It physically hurt her to hold this, to prepare herself to use it. But, she couldn't allow him to hurt her, or himself.
"He's Here!" Sam's scream is back, that insect-being-ripped-apart-one-leg-and-wing-at-a-time scream. "He's burning me, he's BURNING me!" Sam looks right at Pam, eyes wild, blown pupils, bits of his spit shower over her face.
Pam moves swiftly, she plunges the needle into Sam's neck and pushes down on the plunger, it takes effect in under a minute. Sam stops thrashing, limbs go limp, head flops forward with no control. Pam lowers the bed back down. She checks Sam's vitals, his heart is racing, but it starts to come down when the drug fully kicks in. She calls for a male orderly to come in while she removes the restraints so she can change the sheets and clean Sam's backside with his help. When she checks the catheter the orderly snorts at what he sees. She tells him to fuck off.
When Sam's in a clean gown, new sheets under him, wounds dressed from his thrashing, and restraints back on, she dismisses the man. He eyes Sam warily like he will attack her. But Pam just pumped the maximum amount of Haldol allowable into his body, he was as much threat as a rag doll. So the orderly left.
Pam dabs the rag again over Sam's forehead. His eyes are rolled up, but opened just a bit, like he was fighting it, fighting to remain lucid, instead of being trapped where the drugs had taken him. She wipes the rag over them so they close, hoping that he sleeps without dreams.
"I'm sorry." She finally gives in and cries.
xxxxXxxxx
Dean takes a breath, he drinks from the coffee he diluted with Jim Bean. It burns, it mixes with the vomit taste still lingering in his mouth. He hasn't brushed his teeth or shaved in the last 35 hours.
The chair beside Sam's bed is all wood, no padding, no chance of patients asphyxiating on the stuffing in an attempt to kill themselves.
It is not comfortable.
But neither is Dean.
He stares at Sam.
Sam, who is unconscious.
Sam who was drugged out of his mind because he tried to shot Lucifer in a Gas-N-Blow with a loaded .38.
Sam who was drugged out of his mind again, because he had a freak out while Dean was gone.
Dean wanted to throw the damn chair.
He shouldn't have left.
He shouldn't have.
But he didn't know what the hell else to do. The moment he realized that Sam was still talking to Lucifer, that nothing had changed. Dean had broken- he fought the police when the manhandled Sam into the ambulance, cuffed to the gurney, fought them, but didn't stop it from happening. He was too numb, too much in shock. Too blinded by Sam's screaming.
His brother was gone.
He was right here, but he was gone. There was nothing left. Hell took Sam away from Dean and left his ruins behind.
Dean's face lowered to his hands, he swipes at the beard that has grown on his face. A heart monitor beeps, Dean's only company.
"You were always a premadonna, even had to out crazy crazy." He laughed, dryly, running a hand over his head like an angry sigh.
Sam doesn't respond. The nurse said the drugs would keep him under for a long time. All he does is breathe, limbs flaccid, weighed down by hard leather restraints.
"Why didn't you tell me, Sam?" Dean talks to Sam anyway, unresponsive or not. The chair creaks as he leans forward, elbows on his knees staring at his brother. "You think I wouldn't notice Lucifer still swimming around in your pool?" His voice rises, he is angry. So damn angry at Sam. "You think I'm stupid Sam?" Dean wants Sam to say something, so he can retaliate, so this anger can vent. So he doesn't have to feel it eating him alive, so what was lying underneath could come out.
"With all the shit that's been going on, this isn't supposed to something you're supposed to hide, Sam!"
Sam's response was to breathe, to remain unconscious.
How the hell did they wind up here? Even with all the shit they'd been dealt with hell tours and angels, and deaths upon deaths – how did it come to this?
"You know I wish I'd never made that deal," the words are quiet, piercing, sad. "I wished I'd a never made that deal, Sam. Course, you'd be dead-"he laughed, so devoid of humor was this laugh it was physically painful to execute. "But you wouldn't be here – I don't know how to fix you here, Sammy."
Dean drops his face to his hands again. That dry laughter came again But then it died and was replaced by something dry, heaving that became wet, tears spilling into his hands. He raises his head, and the harsh halogen catches the shining tracks on his face.
He wipes them with his palms. He screwed up. He screwed it all up. He let his little brother go to hell, and now he was shattered. He shattered his little brother – the one thing he swore he would always keep whole.
He watches Sam sleeping the false sleep of the drugged. Dean doesn't have any weapons, he was searched on his way into the locked down ward. At least he doesn't have any weapons that they know about. There is a tiny push knife hidden in the sole of his shoe. One swift dig in the back of the neck, to the cerebellum, and it would be done. Sam wouldn't be suffering anymore. And neither would Dean, because he would follow Sam down in a second, right before he torched the room with the match and the flammable oxygen and isopropanl alcohol he found in the supply closet.
It was a long way from Butch and Sundance, a long way away from fighting end he imagined for them, but they would go together. It would be the one promise he could keep to Sam. The one he promised when Castiel tried to keep him from Stull Cemetery.
He wasn't going to let Sam die alone.
But, he couldn't do it.
Not because he was scared to die, he'd live through worse things than death in his life.
But, because Sam didn't tell him it was okay.
Sam wasn't here to give his permission for their deal.
And Dean wasn't going to make it for him.
Sam was crazy, and had broken all over the floor from Lucifer's torture for 18 decades. Dean didn't know if he would ever be whole again – but he was still Sam, somewhere in there, still Dean's little brother.
Dean stand up from the chair, walking the five steps to the bed with such weariness it was like he was weighed down with shackles.
Sam looked so – small- lying there, like he'd been tied up by monsters and left abandoned to die. And there wasn't a damn thing Dean could do about it. And that was the worst thing imaginable. Because he was supposed to protect Sam – not because it was a duty, but because it was Sam.
But he failed. He couldn't protect Sam from this – from himself. He tried, and it got them to this psychiatric lock down.
He slipped a hand into Sam's limp one – it was so cold, that Dean felt, what only could be described as sadness welling up in him.
"I screwed up kid," He tried to smile, even a cynical one like Frank had taught him. But, in the end his tears fell against the railing of the hospital bed. "Sammy, I'm sorry."
xxxxXxxxx
Sam wriggled his arms in the restraints, they didn't yield, his arms were rubbed raw from his thrashing over the past 24 hours. The white bandages adding very little padding to the injuries underneath. But at least he was sitting up now – strapped to a wheelchair. Being force fed a psychiatrist evaluation.
It was the last step before he was shipped off to a real Psych center the next day. Ones where they put bars on the windows and drug your food. Sam's head was foggy from the Depakote they shoved at him earlier. He took it without argument, because the dregs of the Haldol they'd given him made him complaint, too complaint for his liking. But his brain seem to make him do things against his will, and the pills were swallowed.
Now he was trussed up a wheelchair in hospital pjs, sitting in front of dark brunette doctor with cat's eye glasses and his file, prepared to make notes on what they talked about. In the background was a burly orderly who was built like a line backer, arms crossed behind his back. Poised to "assist" with him should he become combative.
Sam would've snorted if he didn't think it would get him tranquilized again. He barely remembered the last 24 hours, it was all a haze of nurses and drugs, and a catheter which was thankfully out now because he was trusted to take a piss in a bed pain without slitting someone's wrist with the edges of it.
"She's a looker Sam," Lucifer is wearing thick Woody Allen glasses, wearing a gray 1950's style Brooks Brother's suit, scribbling into a clip board. "At least you got a pretty girl to tell you you're bat shit."
"Mr. Winchster-"
Dr. Angela Watson, the hospital psychiatrist watches Sam's body language, which is tense, but if she can't understand that being tied to a chair is a tense creating moment, then Sam can't help her, and he's supposed to be the crazy one.
"Tell me about the Incident," She said it with a capital 'I'
A smile pulls at Sam's lips, he's sure it looks a bit fractured, but the Haldol and the Depakote have made him not care. The beard tugs with that smile, but he hasn't been able to shave – razors plus crazy people equals bad idea. "You read my file doc."
"Score one for Crazy Winchester," Lucifer ticks off a check mark on the paper on his clip board. His legs are crossed, mimicking the doctor, who he is sitting right beside.
"Fair enough," Dr. Watson says, writing some variation of what Sam said down in her notes. "How are you feeling?"
"Drugged." Sam says flippantly, if not a little slurred. He felt both exhausted and drunk, like he would slump onto the floor if the restraints on the chair weren't tethering him down. He cocks his head to her, a movement that cracks his neck. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sammy," Lucifer waves a finger at him. "Don't be a dick." The hallucination leans over to watch Dr. Watson is writing, reading it aloud to Sam as she writes 'Patient still appears frayed, but calmer under treatment of antiscitzo meds. Remarks clipped, short, eye contact strong, body language hunched, tense-you don't come off to well in this story Sam."
Sam doesn't talk to the hallucination. Talking to it is what landed him here. Not at the convenient store, but the first time, in the warehouse.
Dr. Watson doesn't say anything to Sam's curt remark. She's been around enough psych patients to know when she was being taunted. "Your brother tells me you've been though something traumatic – it's why you went off in that store-"
There is a dark Maxiglass window in front of him he knows it's an evaluation room, where other doctors are watching him, writing things down on how long to commit him, how many drugs to shoot through his veins. He knows Dean is there too, family wasn't allowed during the psych evaluations. They could influence the patient's responses.
Dr. Watson leans forward, eyes clinical, but not uncaring. Often times psychotic breaks come at the heels of horrible events, deaths, rape, domestic violence. Given the right opportunity, everyone could snap. "Why don't you tell me about that?"
Sam snorts this time, at the same time Lucifer does. He folds his lips together for a moment. "Let's see, I spent 180 years in Hell being tortured by Lucifer-"
"You're welcome." Lucifer waves his hand in a grandiose gesture.
"-You do the math," Sam finishes, staring right at Dr. Watson.
Dr. Watson doesn't write anything down, her eyes on Sam, like she is trying to determine why such a healthy young man was tied up in front of her, losing his mind. "Something like that had to be hard-" Often times with newly diagnosed cases like these, the delusions were so intense that she would have to allow herself into their world, go along with it otherwise she would never be able to find a key to pull them back out.
Sam bites back the 'you think?" He is playing the part of crazy very well, and he couldn't give a damn. It must be the drugs, or the reason that he was given them. "Yeah, hard is one way to put it. But, I didn't remember any of it – see I blocked it out-"
"That's not uncommon Sam," Dr. Watson says. "Often times, during extremely traumatic events the brain simply blocks thing out, it's a defense mechanism."
"Or cowardice," Lucifer sidebars, writing in Sam's chart in Dr. Watson's absence. "That's the word she's fishing for Sam. Being a little pussy who doesn't want to remember rooming with me."
"But, you're starting to remember aren't you?" Dr. Watson watches Sam's eyes shift, from flippant uncaring sarcasm, a break created in them, letting her see something beneath it.
Sam stares at her, like she slapped him, but doesn't say anything. He's been hallucinating Lucifer for months, but he only vaguely remembered being down there with him, in Hell. Until three days ago – in that gas station.
"What is it you think I remember?" Sam is trying to be a sarcastic dick. To play the role of crazy, stupid psych patient. But, it was always Dean who was better at this. Dean who was now watching him through shatter proof Maxi glass, watching all of it.
"You have to tell me Sam," Dr. Angela Watson answers simply.
Sam dry laughs, but in the end he still says what he's afraid to say: "I can't."
"Sure you can Sammy." Lucifer coaches, reaching out to touch Sam's knee. "Just tell the hot woman all about what I did to you, so we can lie tied up in bed all the live long day/365."
"The hardest part is talking, Sam," Dr. Watson coaxes, she closes the file, to show Sam that she is listening, to him and will write about it later. "Thinking about it keeps it all in your head. But, talking makes it real – and that can be terrifying."
"Stop," Sam warns. He would point a finger at her if wasn't tied down. "You don't know a damn thing about me, alright? You can't psycho analyze what you don't know-"
"You're right Sam, I don't know-" Dr. Watson cuts off, she reaches over to touch his hand, the same one Lucifer grasps.
In the background the orderly moves closer, patients aren't supposed to be touched during treatments, it can set them off. But, Dr. Watson waves him off.
"You have to tell me."
Her eyes are a muddled blue. Blue like the ones Sam can feel watching him on the other side of the Maxiglass. He's never talked about it, because he didn't remember it. All he saw was Lucifer taunting him, and as terrifying as it was it wasn't a memory of hell. Not the kind that Dean told him about, broken by the roadside, about carving and tearing and Alistair making him a torturer.
But, in that convenient store, Lucifer throwing this at his head, calling him a 'lost lover', something suddenly snapped in him – a crack opened, and he saw straight down. He saw, he remembered - hell.
And this doctor was wanting him to share that. She had no idea what she was asking – no idea-
"Pandora's Box is already opened Sam," Lucifer says removing his glasses "Might as well go Full on Crazy."
"It might make you feel better."
Dr. Watson's declaration made Sam laugh head thrown back, then down. The laugh was a broken, crazy sounding thing. He was already in a psych ward, about to be shipped off for the rest of his life to be feed drugs like food. And what he remembered would guarantee that.
But, it was open, the memory, and his defenses were too lowered by drugs to fully close it, to be flippant anymore.
"Fire."
Dr. Watson tilts her head at Sam, like she misheard him.
He raises his head back up to her. "I remember fire. Hotter than any furnace- and it burns off my flesh-"
"Keep going Sammy, you're doing so GREAT!" Lucifer slaps his knee, thoroughly enjoying Sam talking about his torture.
"He tied me down-"
"He?" Dr. Watson cuts off. She has an idea of who he was talking about, but she can't feed him lines. She has to allow Sam to fill in the details of his delusions. It was the only way he could work past them.
"Lucifer."
Lucifer rolls his eyes and pantomimes shooting his brains out, like Dr. Watson was too stupid to listen to.
"He tied me down, and burned of my flesh, day after day, and each time it would come back, new. He did that for a year," Sam finds his voice trembling, just enough for it to be noticed. He's never talked about this, and he doesn't want to, not to a stranger. He laughed again, but it wasn't maniacal this time, it only sounded like pain.
"Then he got more –creative. Started peeling my muscles off with his bare hands and feeding them to the hellhounds outside the Cage. I could feel them eating it."
"My puppy's were hungry for a Sammy Snack," Lucifer says. "But get to the BEST part-" Lucifer unbuttons his suit jacket when he leans forward like a goddamn professional. "My FAVORITE part-"
"Sam?" Dr. Watson's voice is quiet, even after hearing such a horrific narration. She releases his hand. Because, holding it anymore would've made the gesture placating. And, she was there to listen – even if her patients hand to be tied down and drugged in order to be put in front of her.
"C'mon Sam," Lucifer flicks a finger through Sam's bangs that are stringy with stale sweat. "Don't leave her in suspense – tell her-"
"He'd get bored sometimes I guess," Sam flickers a gaze down at his hands. He laughed looking down into fingers, and the dryness from it would've chapped his hands if what made it up would fall there.
"Excellent, Sam." Lucifer says in a clinical doctor's voice, "Keep going-"
"And he liked to do other things-"
Dr. Watson's flicker recognition on what Sam said. "Were- Sam did someone-"
Lucifer snorted. "Please, why would I risk the STD's?"
Sam looked at the doctor with a blink, like she was the one who needed to be drugged at the suggestion. "He liked to be Dean."
"The Devil liked to be your brother?" Dr. Watson tread carefully. She couldn't place thoughts into Sam's head. It could drive him deeper into his alternate reality. But, she was also saying it to clarify it for herself.
"It was his favorite game."
"It was my favorite game."
Sam and Lucifer's words synched with each other, and the Devil shoots Sam a wink.
"He liked to make me think that Dean was there-"
This was one of the worse cases of psychotic breaks that Dr. Watson had seen in years. Sam had manifested an entire delusion of hell. Something horrible had to have happened to him to break him this badly.
"To hurt you?" Dr. Watson was worried for a second that her question would coach a response out of Sam.
But it didn't.
"He never tortured me as Dean," Sam told her as matter-of-fact as if she asked him his name and eye color. He laughed that dry laugh again.
His defense mechanism. Dr. Watson jotted that down in her evaluation notes, feeling Sam watching her do so. His green eyes muddled by drugs, but no less piercing.
"He'd rip me apart for days, bled me until there was nothing left. But then it stopped, and it would be Dean standing- He'd like to make me think-"
"Don't stutter Sam," Lucifer chides. "It's not attractive."
"He'd make me think that Dean had come. That he was getting me out," Sam's voice was the timbre above a whisper. A heavy moisture hung in his eyes, but he swallowed down the pain, and laughed instead, because laughing hurt less. "Yeah, but that never worked out. And each time he'd melt it away, and I'd be right back inside, me and him –
-forever."
"Forever." Lucifer repeated wit Sam again. "Couldn't said it better myself." He slid his glasses the pocket of his suit jacket, leaning on his elbows to stare at Sam. "No Dean, just Luci and Sam." He leaned forward more. You asked for it Sammy. You TOLD big brother to leave you down there, I was just honoring your wishes."
"I forgot everything down there," Sam voice was so quiet, the sound of his breathing seemed overpower it. "I forgot the world, I forgot my name – the pain was so bad. You can't imagine pain that bad doc-"
Dr. Watson had stopped writing, pen still against her clipboard, she found herself unable to do anything but listen.
"And it never stopped." Sam struggled with keeping his crazy face on, his breathing increasing, because being crazy wasn't as painful as being broken. "Every damn day, he told me to forget about Dean. To stop giving him an in for him to tear at me with-"
"And you never listened," Lucifer says this like Sam is a disobedient child. "That's why we're here." He spreads his arms wide to indicate the cold sterile room.
"But I can't, I couldn't-" Sam corrects in a voice that shakes jaggedly. "I screamed for him every time."
xxxxXxxxxx
On the other side of the Maxiglass Dean felt like a hand was trying to squeeze his rib cage closed. He didn't breathe. He had forgotten how to the moment Sam had started talking.
Sam had been hallucinating the Devil for months, leaking hell memories. But, this time it wasn't a hallucination.
He was hearing about Sam's time in hell for the first time.
And it he felt like he was bleeding. It hurt so fucking much. Because he hadn't been there to stop it, he had given his goddamn permission to let it happen.
The doctor's hand moved forward to grab Sam's wrist. But, Dean watched Sam flinch like he'd been electrocuted.
"Leave me alone!" He managed to grab her wrist through the restraint, and it was a strong enough of a grip to make her struggle to free herself. "Don't fucking touch me!"
There was a commotion from the two orderlies in the corner of the room. The one who looked like he could play defensive line for the Rams shot forward, yanking the Doctor's hand free. "Okay man that's enough!"
Dean watched him grip Sam's neck in a choke hold, leaving his brother gasping.,He
Dr. Watson stood back up clutching her wrist, the clipboard fell of her lap to the floor. "Be careful with him!" she barked. It didn't matter what he had just done, he was still a human being.
"He's combative doc. He needs to be handled" He said this like hired muscle, yanking Sam's wheelchair forcefully backwards while the second man grabbed a prefilled syringe off of a tray. "Hold still crazy."
Sam's arms were taught, cord tight, fighting the restraints, as the needle full of Haldol was drawn closer to his arm. "No, No Dean!" His scream for his brother, was desperate, frantic.
This is what Sam sounded like in hell for over a century.
"Dean, please PLEASE!"
Dean was through the door so fast he didn't remember doing it.
Sam gave a guttural choking whimper of a sound when the needle was plunged into his arm. His head flung back, banging into his chair, in silent cries of 'No'
The orderly detracted the needle, and blocked Dean's path when he tried to move towards Sam. "Sir, you need to stay back until he's calm-"
"You get away from my brother, you understand me?" Dean pushes at the man like he is a wall, like he is something to be torn apart. "You get away from him!"
"Dean-" Sam's voice is half gone, pleading.
Dean shoves at the man, tortured by hearing such a sound from his brother and not being able to get to him. His arm is grabbed at, pinned behind his back.
"No!" Dr. Watson's voice shouts, her arms raised like she is trying to flag down a tank. She had seen enough. Sam was screaming, this grown man was screaming for his brother. "Let him go."
The orderly looks at her like she's fucking crazy, but he releases Dean with in 'it's your funeral' way.
Dean dropped in front of the wheelchair. Sam's head was flagged forward, the muscles in his neck unable to support the weight, due to the drugs now going through him.
"Sam, hey, hey, hey, hey!" Dean grabs that lolling head.
"Dean," Sam's voice was frayed, panicked. Fighting the effects of the drug with every bit of his reserves. His eyes were so dilated they were black.
"Don't be pathetic," Lucifer is leaning downwards his ear. "I ripped you apart like paper. I tore off your legs like a bug. Rubber rooms are for ROCK stars buddy – C'mon Sam, let's here that beautiful scream of yours!" Lucifer pressed his lips right into Sam's ear and screamed.
Sam's scream was born, but died a chocking horribly broken sound in his throat. "Dean-" the drug pulled at him like a wave, he jerked, fighting it. He didn't want to go under. He didn't want to go back.
"Hey!" Dean grasped his neck tighter.
"Please," Sam's tears finally fell, burning down his face, sliding down Dean's fingers.
Dean undid the restraints confining Sam in a blur of movement. The orderly moved to stop him, but the doctor grabbed him away.
Sam's upper body strength was gone, he fell into Dean with a tumble.
"Hey, " Dean pulled Sam's head up, holding it in both his hands. "Look at me man!" his fingers were digging into the sides of his brothers face. "I'm here Sam. I'm right here, you understand?"
"I can't make it stop," Sam's voice stuttered on pain. He can feel the fire burning his skin. He feels it, all the time. "Please – make it stop."
His ends on a whimper, something so broken and beaten Dean feels it like a punch. Sam's body slumped completely into him, no longer able to fight the effects of the drug on his body.
"Sam?" Dean feels a rush of tears leak down his face when Sam slumps boneless into his arms.
Why was it like this? "Sammy?-Sammy?"
Why was it fucking like this? God damnit, he doesn't know what to do – Sam was in so much agony, and he doesn't know what to fucking do- Dean feels his chest explode in blinding pain.
Dr. Watson approaches Dean slowly. He is holding on to his unconscious brother, holding Sam's massive weight against him like he fit so easily, hearing something she thought was Dean talking, but when she got closer, she heard something else.
"Hey Jude, don't make it bad-" The song was completely off key, sounding like it was coming from a static feed, because it was coming from a broken voice. But, Dean sang the song anyway, the song their mother would sing to them when they were sick or hurt. Hell was a long way from 'sick' or 'hurt', but it wasn't a long way from pain.
"Take a sad song and make it better- Remember, to let her in your heart-" Dean's voice dies on pain as he holds Sam to him and simply rocks, as the rest of the world fades.
xxxxXxxxx
Sam blinks.
He doesn't know what time it is.
He doesn't remember where he is.
Then he sees Lucifer smiling at him in the corner, giving him a finger wave, and his eyes slam shut, because he remembers, and he doesn't' want too.
His arms pulsate with pain, his head is throbbing. He feels so lethargic and fuzzy from the drugs. He groans.
Dean is sitting beside him in a chair, watching him, and immediately leans over him. "Sam? Hey-"
A hand is on his chest.
"Dean?" Sam questions, he knows who it is, but it is such an instant response, a need to find something so vital.
"Yeah, It's me dude," Dean tries to sound casual, but his voice is too raw for that. He helps Sam sit up. "How ya doin?
Sam feels Dean's hand supporting him as he maneuvers upwards on the bed, and it is only then that he notices that he has no restraints. They have been such a constant thing for 2 days, that their absence makes him feel like he might fall off the bed. "What happened to my-" Sam jerks on his arms, miming, not being able to say it out loud.
"Two hour circulation check, told them I would keep an eye on you." Dean says it so clipped it sounds like he's pissed at Sam. "My question now – how ya doin?"
Sam rubs a hand through his head with another groan. "I don't know," his answer is honest. His brain is hazy from all the drugs and the shock from getting the drugs. "Everything's kinda spinning."
"You were pretty doped up Sam," Dean tells him. "But it will wear off soon."
Sam understands then that Dean's clipped remark from before wasn't directed at him. Dean was angry at this place, at those who had drugged him.
"Until the next time," Sam says airily, almost like he didn't care, but it held to much pain.
"Yeah, well there's not going to be a next time, Sam." Dean says. "We're getting your ass outta here." He sets a bag with Sam's clothes on it on the bed. "I rewired the camera feeds here and in the hallway, it'll look like you're sleeping, gives us a 20 minute window" Dean dumps the clothes onto the bed, jeans and a gray t-shirt tumble out on Sam's lap. He looks down at his brother. "You okay to walk?"
Sam eyes him for this remark, and the clothes. His head is still spinning, and he is now trying to process all of this. "Dean-"
"You know what, it doesn't matter," Dean says, pulling back Sam's blanket. "You still feel shaky, I can carry your outta here."
"Dean-"
"We're leaving Sam!" Dean suddenly shouts, staring dead at his brother. "Why are you fighting me on this?" The anger in his eyes could kill someone, but behind it is something else, something hurting. "What, you wanna stay in the crazy house with fucking Lucifer as company?"
"You saw what happened," Sam said, his voice low, but matching his brother's for intensity. "You saw what I did."
"GET BACK!" Sam waves the gun around at the crowd Lucifer who is standing next to fountain drink dispenser. He releases the safety on the gun. People scream. A wall of fire suddenly erupts around Sam, he feels his flesh sizzling off his bones. He screams, just as he is thrown to the ground by a cop.
"It doesn't matter," Dean says.
"Dean-"
"I heard you Sam!" Dean cuts off before Sam's over analytical-even-hopped up on psych meds- mind can add anything too it. His voice cuts off, and both men stare at each other, in a silence that isn't profound, it's bleeding.
"I heard you Sammy. I know what hell sounds like. I heard it in your voice." Dean stared at Sam with - such a deep intensity - the accumulation of 2 years worth of guilt swimming in that one look.
He shouldn't have let this happen, he should've fought Sam harder. "And, I'm not letting you go through it alone with a bunch of dicks. "
"What if it's too late?" Sam says, so simply it's completely heartbreaking. "Dean-what if this is the kind of crazy you can't fix?"
Sam is looking at Dean, and his age is stripped away to the kid who only knew that Dean could fix anything, that he wouldn't let anything hurt him. That boy died a long time ago, Sam thinks he killed him, but his big brother still remained.
"Doesn't matter," Dean repeats again his words an absolute, hearing his words spoken by Sam, the ones he told Bobby all those months ago. Bobby was dead, their beloved father figure, but there was still Sam. "It's you and me Sam. That's it." There is such a firm deep love in his words, not sappy, not anything but real. Because he watched Sam jump say yes, watch him jump away from him to be tortured in hell –
And now he remembered it, now he was broken. This could kill him, this was killing him. But, Dean wasn't letting his brother die here, in some damn cell block, drugged out of his mind by people who didn't understand.
Dean moved forward, and grabbed Sam's neck, and before Sam could process it a rough calloused kiss was on his forehead, so raw and sad it physically hurt them both.
"Get dressed man, or I'm doing it for you, and I don't care what I rip off in the process." Dean tried to mask the pain of such an action behind flippant humor.
He turned his back trying to give same some dignity as Sam got into his clothes.
They leave the hospital, maneuvering through the security cameras Dean had reworked. Sam's arm is draped over his, his gait is still weakened by drugs. Dean supports him as best he can.
Their out in the hospital parking lot, under a burnt out streetlight. Only the dim light of the stars to see by. Sam finds himself clamoring inside a car, half lowered in by Dean.
And, there's something – familiar- about the car, the leather, the smells.
Sam opens an eye, and sees an familiar A Track player. "Dean?" He sits up, staring around the interior of the Impala, something he hadn't laid eyes on in months. It smells like must and leather, and stale fast food wrappers still littering the floor of the back seat, and Dean's cologne.
Dean settles his jacket over Sam like a blanket. His brother looks like shit, like shitted on shit. But, he was still sitting there – and Dean would take that, he would hold to that, no matter how short it was.
"You totally don't rock beards, man. " Dean says, trying to tease, but it's a quiet broken sounding tease.
"Dean, What the hell are you doing?" Sam asks, trying to make his voice stronger than it really was. But, it was shot, from all the screaming.
Dean gives him a smile, it comes up so quickly, it's painful. "Driving in my car with my brother."
Sam closes his eyes against the pain, both physical and the one that hurts more. Because, all the dying, and bleeding and fighting – it was because all he ever wanted to be, was here.
He finds Dean's eyes when he opens his, and the car turns on, the engine sounding around them.
xxxxxXxxxxx
End.
Can't say anything else.
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