Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or its characters - these were created by Eric Kripke - I'm just borrowing them. I'm not making any commercial gain. No harm or infringement intended.
All alone, Dean can only hope that Sam will recover from a terrible accident. But is everything as it seems, and should you always beware of Greeks bearing gifts?
A/N: Thanks to all in the Ficwise writing group, especially CFEditor, for helping make this everything I could have ever hoped. All mistakes are my own.
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I Don't Feel So Alone
"When I think of you, I don't feel so alone" – 'Vanilla Twilight', Owl City
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Dean's mind ran around in circles as he tried to make sense of a future all alone. He felt like one of those military veterans returned from active service with an injury that no one wants to acknowledge, missing limbs and trying to scratch phantom itches. He was dancing round the edges of a full-blown panic attack, PTSD, or whatever-the-hell the name of it was. It was only the thought of needing to be strong for Sam that gave him the strength to keep going.
He stared at the motionless form in the bed in despair. Please, Sammy. The machines hummed and buzzed and beeped as they kept the body alive. But there was no sense that anyone was even in there.
He glared at the monitors in the vain hope that pure force of will alone would generate some sign of life. Please, Sammy.
Dean tried to deny it, but he knew in a secret part of his heart that Sam was gone. He was certain he was not in the room. With a sad resignation, he realized that he had no one in all of the world to lean on. They had lost so many good people and in recent years things had got so desperate. He could really do with a gruff insult from Ellen or Bobby right now. He blinked away the prickling of tears in his eyes. This isn't helping.
He couldn't bring himself to abandon his position by the bed, only he couldn't bear to stay either. He'd sat for as long as he could until the anger and frustration had built up to such a boiling point that he physically could not stay in place. He stalked the long, endless hallways of the hospital before circling back round the way he had come, a fierce scowl so embedded on his face that no one dared stop him or ask him to respect visiting hours.
He looked at the coffee machine in confusion, wondering how he'd got there, not really aware of his endless wandering. He patted his pockets in absentmindedness. No change. He shrugged; it wasn't as if he could stomach the thought of food and drink right now anyway.
Something large and dark flickered at the corner of his eyes. He spun round with a cold chill down his spine and a spiking adrenaline rush. Nothing.
He released the deep breath he only now noticed he'd been holding. Was it any wonder he was seeing things when he hadn't slept for who knows how many days?
Distracted, he continued following the corridor until his route brought him back to the room. He was forced to come to a stop as an orderly rushed past, pushing a bed and almost running him over.
It was just like the way Sam had tried to throw himself in front of Dean when he was being attacked by something...
No, that wasn't quite it, was it?
Damn head injuries. Dean knew he was probably concussed, but he'd been too stubborn to accept any help. Besides, he was the one that always gave the help. It was difficult to accept that he needed any assistance, especially in case it somehow detracted from the care Sam received. Anyway, he didn't deserve it.
He held his hands to his head to try to quell the sudden stabbing pain in his temples. As he lowered his hands he looked on in horror at the sight of them soaked in blood. He blinked and laughed as he realized it was just the light from the setting sun streaming in through the window.
He felt that laughter die on his lips as he remembered.
Of all the things to happen; to be knocked down by a bus.
After all the dangers of the supernatural, when gods and demons and even the devil himself couldn't stop them. Only to be cut down by something so stupid and mundane.
"Can you hear me?"
As he turned to look for the sound of the voice, he caught the glimpse of a dark flicker out of the corner of his eye.
"Wake up!"
"Huh? I'm not asleep," Dean mumbled, sitting up in his chair. He looked about the familiar hospital room, unsure of how, or when, he'd made his way back there.
There was no sound other than the steady, unchanging beeping of the life support machines.
He stared at the silent body in the bed in the promise of further movement, thinking that it was his brother's voice he'd heard.
"I'm sorry, Sammy," he sighed as the brief hope faded.
"This is all my fault, if we weren't arguing, this would never have happened. I should've just listened to you. I just..."
He stopped with the sudden need to swallow and took a shuddering breath, overcome with emotion. "I just couldn't bear listening to you talk about not hunting any more... it's... it's all I know."
He leaned forward, placing his hands on Sam's. "I guess I couldn't face the thought of losing you... and now because of me it looks like I am anyway."
He sat up straight and gave his eyes a swift wipe on his sleeve as a nurse stepped into the room.
"Mr. Winchester, you really need to get some rest," she scolded.
"I'm too tired to fall asleep," Dean joked, shrugging to himself as the nurse ignored his reply and instead busied herself with checking the charts.
The room temperature dropped and the nurse shivered, hugging her arms around her torso. "Darn stupid air conditioning," she muttered. Dean's eyes widened at sight of the plumes of her breath stark and white in the now frigid air.
He felt an invisible force pushing him down into the chair. He strove to fight against it, but it was as if he'd been paralyzed.
Something pressed against his face, not heavy, but a firm, probing touch. He tried his utmost to struggle harder as - whatever it was - pried open his mouth and started to slide into his throat.
"Wake up," hissed a voice near his ear.
Dean jerked awake in terror and it was like the invisible bonds were broken as he flew out of the chair and across the room. Placing his back against the wall, he scanned the room with wild, panicked eyes. Flickering, dark forms clustered together and loomed over the hospital bed.
"Sammy," he screamed with all his might, yet was still almost drowned out by the near-continuous shrill shrieking of the monitoring equipment. Dean's heart pounded in terror, his pulse raced in his ears.
In the instant between one blink and another everything changed.
There was nothing there.
He stood waiting for a long time before his breathing returned to normal. A passing orderly glanced in through the open door of the room and gave him an odd look before continuing on his way.
Dean's mind threw up an old childhood memory - he'd been a mass of cuts and bruises following a hunting accident and had soon fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. His eventual awakening had been accompanied with his first and last case of sleep paralysis.
He remembered trying to scream and no sound coming, his mind filling with terror at the weight of something sitting on his chest. He'd had such a sense of someone else being in the room, a malevolent presence. When the feeling passed, it was to discover he'd woken the rest of his family, plus the occupants of the neighboring rooms, with his shouting.
So focused were they on all things supernatural that it had taken a while for his father to calm down and understand the mundane, if still frightening, explanation behind it. The deciding factor was a young Sammy piping up to describe the pathology and cultural significance of the sleep disorder in minute detail like the walking, talking encyclopedia he was. It had been a salutary lesson in not jumping to the wrong conclusion. After all, for every productive hunt there were easily a dozen that had a simple explanation.
The only problem was that Dean was pretty sure that he hadn't just been asleep, which tended to make it difficult to have a sleep-related hallucination.
Dean didn't know what to do, he felt so lost. He had no one to turn to. He'd always been close to his brother, but it had always been more like filling in the role of a parent. It occurred to him how that relationship had changed in the last couple of years. Now he had come to rely on Sam as an equal in helping to shoulder the load.
So without that support was he now losing his mind? If there was something malevolent here then why try to wake him first? Why not just attack him. Struck by a sudden idea, he made his way over to the life support system. Although he couldn't make an in-depth assessment of the readout, he knew enough to see that it was showing a steady unchanging graph. He figured that if the monitor had gone off, the staff would have been in there in an instant.
Sam's never going to wake up, is he?
He was just so wiped out, exhausted beyond any mere tiredness. He must be, to be thinking such things. He shook himself like a cat and decided he really needed that coffee.
The halls seemed even less crowded to him than before. It made him wonder where this hospital was. Everything was such a blur that he couldn't even remember what state they were in. Blinds were down on many of the windows and the evening was drawing in, the sun sinking below the horizon.
He didn't like to leave Sam for too long, but while he was within earshot it was a blessed relief to get even a brief respite from the stifling claustrophobia of the room.
When he got to the coffee machine he remembered the problem he'd had last time.
No change.
Dean sighed in displeasure. He was feeling so drained now it was like a gnawing, physical pain. It worried him that he'd lost track of how long he'd been awake now. He'd learned from harsh experience that anything much more than a couple days without sleep and he started to hallucinate like a loon. He had seen far too much weirdness in his life to ever make an overactive imagination a good thing.
He stood staring at the machine until he had to make way for a tall, thin, dark-haired man in scrubs. He watched the man feed the machine with a handful of bronze coins and retrieve a cup of coffee. Dean's nostrils flared at the wonderful smell.
The man looked at Dean and did a double-take at his appearance. "Here, buddy. You look like you need this more than I do," he said with a kind expression as he passed Dean the drink.
Dean looked at the man with suspicion, unused to being on the receiving end of kindness from strangers. In the end some instinct told him the man was on the level.
"Thanks, Doc." The aroma of the coffee was wonderful, he was so grateful. He took a deep sniff of the beverage and sighed in satisfaction. He opened his eyes, a little embarrassed by his own behavior, to see the doctor looking at him with an intense, expectant expression.
"Smells good, doesn't it."
"I probably shouldn't," Dean confessed.
"It's okay, it's not pomegranate flavored," the man interjected, as if making a joke.
Dean blinked in confusion, not getting the reference, and continued as if the other man hadn't spoken. "I can't remember the last time I got a decent night's sleep."
"Sleep's overrated anyway."
"That seems a strange thing for a doctor to say," Dean chuckled, the drink forgotten for a moment.
"Oh, well, everything is never as it seems, don't you think?" The doctor said, the expression in his piercing gray-green eyes at odds with the levity of his words.
Dean paused, something Sam had said in recent days springing unbidden to mind. "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". At the time he hadn't quite understood Sam's meaning and had just let it go, but now he couldn't help but wonder if it applied here. Or maybe it doesn't.
The lights flickered and the air was charged with a feeling of menace, although no one other than Dean seemed to notice.
"Paging Dr. Haros, code gray," echoed an emotionless voice over the PA.
"Oops, busted," sighed the doctor. "Oh well, duty calls. Enjoy the coffee and don't fall asleep, Dean," he added with a wink.
Dean watched the doctor walk down the long corridor until he was out of sight. The tall, thin guy had seemed familiar, like a family resemblance to someone he couldn't quite place. He took a cautious sip of his coffee; it was delicious.
He made his way back to the room once more, this time feeling buoyed up and full of optimism for the future. He wasn't sure what had happened to change his mood, but he was willing to just go with it and not to think about it too much. It wasn't in his nature to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He felt like that chick song when he got back... 'Walking on Sunshine' or whatever.
His mood flagged as he looked down at the motionless figure on the bed that was not even able to breathe without assistance.
Dean sat down with a guilty realization. It seemed like any excuse drove him from his post by the bedside. He thought back to his childhood and all the times he had sat waiting in similar situations. Did he have more patience back then, or did he just care less now?
As the shame of the thought occurred to him, he became aware of a quiver in the air; as if it too had decided it wanted out of the room.
There was a large, shadowy figure standing in the doorway. The light flooded around it, leaving only a silhouette. Dean's heart hammered in his chest as his instincts screamed that this was not something of this world.
The figure started to move towards the bed. Dean felt frozen in place, his pulse jumping in time to the shrill beeping of the hospital equipment.
The ghostly figure turned to him and seemed to take a run at him, screaming in an agonized voice, "No!"
Dean sat up in the chair, the room now silent other than his pulse pounding in his temples. Another nightmare?
He wasn't even aware that he'd been asleep. A cold chill traveled down his spine at a sudden thought, How much of that was a dream?
The sight of a large rat sitting by the bed made him jolt in his seat, and his heart leapt into his mouth. In the same thought he realized it was just Sam's gray hoodie that Dean had been wearing earlier and had discarded. Great, still seeing things. So not much sleep then.
The nurse from earlier came into the room. "You need to sleep, stop fighting it," she said, sounding irritated rather than sympathetic.
Dean couldn't hold back the laugh, not liking the sound of hysteria within it. "It's like there's someone out there that won't let me."
His mind seemed to grasp at that thought, and there was an odd tension in the air. It passed before he could get a handle on it.
The nurse smiled, it wasn't a look that suited her. "I can help with that," she said, holding a hand outstretched towards him.
In the center of her palm rested a single pill.
Dean hesitated for a moment, before making up his mind. As he reached out to take the tablet, he was startled by a loud rapping at the open door. It was the doctor who had bought him the coffee earlier.
"Nurse?"
The nurse scowled at the intrusion, withdrawing her hand and the pill before Dean could take it.
Dean watched in confusion as Dr. Haros put an arm around the nurse and ferried her out of the room.
"So what about that sleeping tablet?" Dean called after them, coming to his senses a moment too late.
"Believe me, Dean. That's one trip you don't want to be taking," the doctor smirked, pulling the door closed behind him.
"Hey, how do you know my name?" Dean trailed off.
He forced himself to sit upright in his chair as he shook his head to clear the thoughts that he couldn't keep straight in his mind. He was just so worn out, he couldn't bear to keep his eyes open a moment longer. He could feel sleep calling to him like a siren song, pulling him in, pulling him down.
Something large and dark grabbed hold of him. God, it's strong.
Dean fought it with all his might, catching it a good crack under the chin with his elbow.
It swore, "Jerk."
Dean froze.
"I'm not letting you go, man. You gotta fight to stay with me... please."
It was like a weight had been dropped from his shoulders. The room was empty again.
Tears in his eyes, he turned to look at his brother lying so still on the bed. Only it wasn't Sam in the hospital bed. Oh God, that's me...
The world was consumed with a blinding white light and medication-dulled pain.
Dean opened his eyes to see an exhausted-looking Sam staring back down at him.
He tried to speak, but all he could manage was a vague croak. His throat was bone dry and blocked with something. He started to panic until he realized it was just a breathing tube, something he had hoped he'd never have to experience again.
"You're alive, you're alive," Sam sobbed in relief.
As he pulled his brother into a hug, Dean noticed the nurse was back and standing by the door. She seemed older, more wizened and hunched over than before. Her expression was nothing but pure, naked malevolence.
"Friends in high places," she mouthed with a sneer. "Next time."
When he blinked, she was gone.
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"And I'll forget the world that I knew, but I swear I won't forget you"– 'Vanilla Twilight', Owl City
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