I wrote this one years ago for a zine that never materialized, so I thought I'd share it here instead.
Ditched
K Hanna Korossy
"Mr. Baxter?"
He rolled his head away from the unfamiliar voice and name, clenching his teeth when it sent pain stabbing through his head like a knife. A red-hot knife. A really sharp red-hot knife.
Even groggy, he knew something wasn't right there.
"Mr. Baxter, could you open your eyes for me, please?"
A hospital. He recognized the smell and feel of it, and groaned softly at the realization. He hated waking in a hospital. He wasn't worried so much about himself, although his head felt as if it could split open any moment from the vicious throbbing, but Dean and Dad were always…
Dean.
"Mr. Baxter, can you hear me?"
Dean had picked the name "Baxter" out of some old movie. That was one of the dangers of living under aliases: not recognizing them to respond. Dean was usually there to answer for him, though, while reminding him with a touch that he was Sam.
Sam cracked his eyes open to a too-bright room, and a strange face hovering over him.
The guy smiled at him. "Mr. Baxter, it's good to see you awake. Do you know where you are?"
Not a clue. That was something else Dean was always ready to provide. Sam gingerly tilted his gaze to either side of the doctor, looking for his brother. Dean could just handle all of this, as far as Sam was concerned.
But no one else was there.
Sam's heart started pounding. Dean could be off doing paperwork, or getting some nasty scratch sown up, or even in the bathroom, but something didn't feel right. Sam was alone, inhabiting an identity with no past, without his brother there to give it one.
He stared back at the doctor, feeling groggy and weak and thoroughly scared. "Dean?" he whispered.
"Who?" the man asked, frowning.
And that was the final straw because, good or bad, nobody who met Dean forgot him. Especially not when Sam was hurt. He curled a hand around the cool metal of the bed railing and tried raising his head.
It didn't go so well. Light and agony exploded in an impressive fireworks display across his vision, and the doctor was saying something urgent Sam couldn't hear. Hands he didn't know pressed him back down.
"Where's Dean?" he asked thickly, although he couldn't have heard the answer over the roaring in his ears. But what mattered was that Dean wasn't there, apparently never had been, and that couldn't be good.
But the room was fading, his head pounding him back to oblivion. And even though he fought it, it swept Sam Winchester back into darkness.
00000
His mouth tasted like wool, and his head…the less said about his head, the better.
Sam opened his eyes to an unsurprisingly unfamiliar room and tried to remember where and who he was this time.
The "where" was a hospital, definitely. Small town, from the looks of the cheerful curtains and wallpapered walls. That made sense with the headache from Hell. Dean would have the "who" covered, and, speaking of which, his brother was probably worried sick about him. Sam glanced around the room as best he could without moving his head too much, looking for a propped pair of boots or the top of a close-cropped head.
The realization he was alone in the room brought it all back with a gasp.
No Dean. They hadn't even heard of Dean. And Sam in the hospital with no Dean around left only a few frightening options he was trying hard not to think about.
Sam lifted his head with gritted teeth, locating the call button by his left arm. The arm that was splinted palm to almost his elbow. Sam barely spared it a look before closing his fingers on that one link to information, pressing it repeatedly.
Small-town hospitals always responded faster. A nurse hurried through the door ten seconds later, smiling at him as she arrived. "Mr. Baxter—"
Baxter, right. Sam wondered idly if at least he'd kept his first name. "Where's my brother?" he asked hoarsely, voice reverberating painfully in his head. Sprained forearm and head injury; if that was the extent of it, he'd been lucky. He just wished he knew Dean had been, too.
Her smile faded into confusion. "Your brother? I'm sorry, we did find an emergency number in your wallet, but no one answered. You came in alone, Mr. Baxter—no one's been here to see you."
That did it. He wasn't staying there another minute with Dean God only knew where. Sam clamped his jaw together and began the slow and torturous process of getting himself vertical.
"No, no, Mr. Baxter," the nurse rushed forward, "you're not ready to sit up yet. Just lie down—I'll get your doctor."
"I have to find Dean," Sam said doggedly, ignoring the way the room was doing a slow rock-and-roll around him. He pulled out the IV needle over the nurse's protesting squawk and pushed back against her hands as she tried to press him back to the bed. "You don't understand."
"He's your brother, I understand, and we'll do our best to find him, just please—"
Sam shook his head, all but feeling his brain slosh around in his skull. No one would know where to look if Dean had been taken by a wendigo, or coaxed to a lake by a deerwoman, or locked away by an obsessed ghost. "I have to…"
But his body was weak, and the small hands pushing him back down were winning the battle he couldn't let himself lose. Sam focused on the fact that she was the obstacle keeping him from his brother when Dean was possibly hurt or snared, and the adrenaline let him shove back.
The nurse gave a small sound of frustration that in other times would have roused his sympathy. "Do you even know how you got here?'
And that stopped him cold, because he had no idea.
There were vague memories. Riding in the car with Dean, still on a high from a hunt that had ended with them saving a couple of kids. Something heavy and loud on the radio, which described most of Dean's music collection. A shared joke, something about the rain falling. He'd been laughing.
Then, nothing. Sam rubbed at his forehead and tried to remember, but there was only emptiness, like the rest had been cut off. For all he knew, whole days could be missing in between.
The shivery panic of that thought seized his breath, and Sam utterly ignored the pain this time as his head shot up to look at the nurse. "How long have I been here?"
Her face softened. "Look, I'll make you a deal. You let the doctor check you out first, and I'll tell you everything I know about how you arrived. Okay?"
Sam barely even paused to consider it, looking at her hard. "Please."
"You got here the day before yesterday, late afternoon. They found you wandering along Thesiger Road, barely on your feet, your head bleeding. That road doesn't get a lot of traffic, so there's no telling how long you were walking. Do you remember what you were doing there?"
He didn't even know where there was, and the fear was a solid mass inside his chest now. "I was alone? No one else, no car?"
"The police looked around but they couldn't find anybody. They figured you'd been roughed up and dumped—there wasn't any money in your wallet."
Sam gave her a mirthless smile. That wasn't unusual. But no Dean…
"I'm going to get the doctor, okay?"
He nodded absently, barely feeling his head's complaint that time.
Wandering alongside a road, bleeding. There was no way Dean would have allowed that, not if he'd been there. Which meant…what? That he was unconscious, hurt worse than Sam? Trapped somewhere? Dead?
God, please, not dead. He could deal with anything but that.
Sam swung his feet carefully over the side of the bed and waited with barely restrained impatience. For now, he was working on the assumption that Dean needed him, and that was one of the few times he couldn't be patient.
The door swung open, a hazily familiar man in a white coat coming in. Sam missed his introduction completely.
"I have to leave."
"That is not a good idea, Mr. Baxter. You've had a concussion to the head, which means—"
"I know what it means," Sam said wearily. "Where're my clothes?"
The doctor narrowed his eyes. "They were cut off you when you came in. You also had a sprained arm, a dislocated shoulder, and considerable bruising. You aren't well enough to be up yet."
He waited through the list because he needed to know how bad it was, but that tally was nothing compared to a few other times in the past. The clothes were a small problem; Dean usually took care of things like that, as if Sam needed another reminder his brother wasn't there. He shook his head and started sliding off the bed. "I need to borrow some clothes."
The doctor, maybe ten years older than he, softened into paternal tones. "I heard about your brother—I know you must be concerned, but if you don't even remember what happened, how do you know—?"
"Please," Sam said quietly and firmly. "I need to borrow some clothes."
The man glared at him.
Sam had always lost staring contests with Dean because his brother possessed a stubbornness that bordered on the inhuman, but a non-Winchester didn't have a chance. Negotiation followed, clothes for a promise for him to return that evening if he hadn't found Dean. Sam didn't tell the guy he doubted he'd have much of a choice, the way he had to concentrate to keep his legs from wobbling and his vision from blurring, but what the doctor didn't know couldn't hurt him. It could mean Dean's life, however. Which meant Sam wouldn't be coming back alone unless it was on another gurney.
Twenty minutes later, he was waving off a final request to stay, then an offer to help, and climbed into the rental car he'd ordered. In their line of work, offers for help usually couldn't be accepted. It didn't make things any less lonely when he was on his own.
Which Sam had rarely been. He'd gone from family to school to Jess, back to family and Dean. On the road, it had been like taking his home with him. At school, he'd tried to pretend he'd made a home there, and never completely succeeded. Dean hadn't taken him away from a normal life so much as given him a place to go when the pretense of "normal" had fallen apart, obliterated by fire. Home was now once again where his family was: the sound of Dean sleeping next to him, his brother's nudge when Sam turned too far inward, his smug expression and knowing eyes. His brother kept his memories for him, even his identity. Dean was his home.
Which pretty much left Sam homeless.
Sam's jaw worked. He squinted at the road, then at the map one of the nurses had drawn for him. It was blurred at the edges and his head and arm throbbed a few shades harder than the rest of his battered body, but he didn't care. Not about that. He turned on the radio, found the nearest classic rock station, and turned it down to a very low, soothing background hum.
The map was vague when it got to Thesiger Road, and Sam finally pulled over and stopped. He'd been picked up about a mile away from the last intersection, but the dense trees and brush on either side made it impossible to see very far down the road, and Sam wondered how accurate that was. He kinda doubted anyone had bothered to measure off where they'd found him.
Still, it was a place to start, and he climbed out of the car on the second try, holding onto the door frame until he was sure of his feet under him.
Cloud cover and a soft drizzle didn't add to the visibility, but Sam squinted up and down the road. Forest sometimes meant Bad Things, which meant they could have been hunting anywhere along the road. Dean would have parked the Impala out of sight, a fact that had never bothered Sam until that moment. Basically, it meant Dean could be anywhere along the five-plus mile stretch of road and the trees that spread out from it. Meanwhile, Sam had about four hours of daylight left, a splint that was already growing heavy and soggy in the rain, and a headache that threatened to knock him back into unconsciousness if he turned his head too fast. It sounded, he thought with a grim smile, exactly like their kind of odds.
But he hadn't seen anything on the mile of road he'd been on so far and had to start somewhere. The rain and light weren't getting any better. Sam took a deep breath and set off from the car with what he euphemistically considered a brisk walk.
His mind replayed what memories it had as he went. Riding in the car in similar weather, Dean driving, his arm along the back of the seat. Sam wondered sometimes if it was Dean's way of being in arm's reach. The patter of rain on the windows and roof had made Sam sleepy, but there hadn't been a Jess nightmare in two days and he wasn't that tired. Dean had teased him nonetheless about needing as much sleep as an old man, now that Sam was resting well enough to make the subject fair game. They'd talked about the rain, and the creatures they'd come across that liked rain, were killed by rain, were made of rain. Typical conversation with his brother. Comfortable. Happy, in their own way.
Followed by a lot of dark nothing.
Sam tried to cast his thoughts forward, what would happen if he couldn't find Dean, and found that dark and empty and unbroachable, too.
He stopped every dozen feet and shouted "Dean!" His voice was beaten down by the deluge and his body's weakness, but Sam kept trying. For each other, they always kept trying.
A mile had passed, by his estimation. That left about three more before the end of the road. When he got to the end…Sam swayed to a halt. If he got to the end was more like it, because exhaustion already pulled at his feet harder than his soaked shoes, and his vision refused to clear now no matter how much he tried to focus. Sam clutched his soaked splint to him and stared heavily up the road. Dean was out there somewhere, Sam was convinced of it, and he'd keep looking until he collapsed. But then what? That wouldn't help his brother, either. He should have accepted the offered help, except he didn't trust anyone else to look as he did, and if something had Dean…
No. It was up to him. He had to do this. Sam started trudging again, calling out as loudly as raw vocal chords allowed. He paused to tilt his face up into the rain to collect a mouthful of water.
And heard what at first he thought was beginning delirium.
"Sam!"
If he was hearing things, they were really in trouble.
But it came again, strident even in its faintness. "Sam!" And it was followed by a cough and a sputter his imagination had no reason to conjure.
Trembling, Sam started moving again, his walk quickly turning into a stumbling sprint. "Dean! Where are you?"
Another cough. "Side of the road. Ditch. Hurry."
Side of the road. The ground curved sharply down on both sides of the blacktop before rolling up into the trees, and Sam had kept half an eye on the deep ruts. Now, he moved to the right side of the road, looking down the length of the gully that was pretty much invisible from the center of the blacktop.
The Impala rested on its side not fifty feet away, dark metal fading into the shadows of the ditch. And trapped underneath…
Sam's weak trot broke into a full run.
"Dean!" he hollered, partly out of fear, mostly out of desperate need to make sure he hadn't been hearing things before and Dean really was alive. It didn't look good. Only his brother's head and torso protruded from the car's overturned hood, hip and legs somewhere underneath. But he was turned toward Sam, and his arms pushed futilely at the Impala even as Sam drew close.
Dean's head flopped back to the wet ground with a relieved sigh at the sound of Sam's yell, then he choked and sputtered and lifted his head again. "I'm here," he called more wearily. "Dude, hurry up."
"I'm coming," Sam answered, and slipped down the slick slope of the culvert, his feet splashing as he reached the bottom. The car was only one of their problems, Sam realized abruptly. They'd said it'd been raining on and off since he'd been found, and several inches of water had collected in the ditch. Dean was already having to strain to keep his nose and mouth above it. He was going to drown soon if he couldn't get free.
Dean's head splashed in the water as he sagged momentarily. "Thank God. Where've you been?"
"Hospital," Sam said tersely as he knelt beside his brother to take in the situation, his good hand immediately slipping underneath Dean's head and neck to help keep it out of the water. He felt terrified and elated at once, and told himself that was what made his vision blur until Dean's face was a pale splotch. "How're you doing?"
"Peachy. Look at my car, Sam."
He smiled, and said gently, "It doesn't look too bad." Because underneath the smooth sarcasm was fear, and Sam's throat tightened in empathy. Even he could see the dark circles under Dean's eyes, and could imagine too clearly the feeling of being trapped there for two days, wondering if his brother was alive and if he'd survive to find out. Dean's claustrophobia alone must've been driving him insane. Sam brushed his injured hand over his brother's chest in a moment of reassurance and wasn't surprised when Dean reached up to grasp it with a grip just shy of desperate. It changed to puzzled as he felt the sodden splint.
"What happened to you?"
Sam laughed softly. "I was hoping you could tell me. Can you move your legs?"
Dean blinked rainwater out of his eyes. "A little. I don't think anything's broken, but she's got me pinned down good."
"Let me take a look." Sam hesitated, then shrugged out of his borrowed jacket and wadded it into as fat a pillow as possible. He wedged that under Dean's head in place of his hand and noted tightly that even with his neck canted up like that, the water was already lapping at the corner of Dean's mouth. They didn't have much time. Sam patted his arm. "I'll be right back."
"You'd better," was Dean's gruff answer, and there was relief mixed in with the fear now.
Sam stood, glad he was out of Dean's line of sight as the world briefly darkened and swayed around him. Sam caught himself on the edge of the Impala's wheel-well and waited for it to steady before moving.
He trudged through the rising water around the front of the car, hanging on to tires and chrome as he went. Dean's legs were the first thing he saw on the other side, half-buried in the mud, and Sam crouched with difficulty to peer underneath the overturned chassis. The good news was, it was precariously balanced on its side and probably wouldn't be hard to topple back upright. Its weight didn't even seem to be completely resting on Dean, which eased Sam's fear of compression bleed-outs. The bad news, however, was the car seemed to be balanced on Dean's hips and would most likely crush his legs when it fell. But the mud…
Sam leaned forward, experimentally scooping a handful of mud away from Dean's nearest leg, and watched it sink a little further into the muck. Maybe it would work. He went down on his knees and started to dig in earnest, shoveling away armfuls of the stuff.
"What're you doing?" came Dean's strained voice from the other side of the car.
"Digging," Sam answered. His head was starting to send very unhappy messages to the rest of his body, and he had no energy to focus on anything but freeing Dean.
"I tried that—I couldn't dig out."
"I've got a plan." A lot of the mud oozed back into place, but Dean's legs were still lower than they'd been, only his knees and feet sticking up above the surface now.
"Sammy, you okay? You don't sound too good."
He actually smiled at that. He wasn't the one sputtering water every few words. Sam blinked, fighting off creeping lassitude, and kept excavating.
A minute went by. Tremors passed through Dean's body and into Sam's like an electric shock, and he worked hard not to imagine how cold Dean had to be. Sam didn't need more motivation.
It didn't work long. "Sammy!" Dean suddenly called in sharp, gurgling panic, and then there was silence. The water was probably up to his mouth now, climbing toward his nose, and Sam spared one brief second to squeeze his brother's ankle in silent promise before he went back to work, throat working to contain his own fear.
There. The toes of Dean's boots were still visible, but that was good enough. Between the cushion of the mud and the height of the chassis above the wheels, Sam thought they had enough of a margin. Even if not, a few broken toes seemed fairly negligible next to drowning.
It took him three tries and one quiet and brief bout of heaves to rise to his feet again. Sam leaned heavily on the car as he made his way back around.
Dean was busy arching his head up, trying to keep his face out of the water. He choked something out that sounded like "Sam," but it just sent him into another paroxysm of coughing as water filled his mouth. Pain was visible on his face as he strained against the weight of the Impala, and his eyes held unshuttered fear as they turned to Sam. They were both prepared to die. Neither of them was prepared to drown helplessly in front of the other.
Sam moved determinedly forward to stand just beside Dean, his good shoulder against the car. A sturdy branch for a fulcrum would have worked better, but he didn't have time. Sam just prayed the car was balanced as tentatively as it had looked. Pressing his shoulder into it, he ignored the starbursts of pain in his vision and pushed.
Nothing.
It wasn't budging. Sam nearly passed out as he eased off. He couldn't do this. How was he supposed to do this?
Dean's hand brushed his ankle, then clamped on.
Sam glanced down, tired and hurting beyond belief, and saw his brother's face was submerged now, Dean's eyes closing under the water. He was giving Sam one last glance, one last touch to say good-bye and sorry and that it wasn't Sam's fault. All the things they never talked about.
No.
There was no conscious thought beyond that, no ruminations on what dying fire inside him had been rekindled by Dean's own fading spark, not even the earlier terror of what would happen if Dean was gone for good. Just…no.
Sam moved automatically and with strength he shouldn't have had, kneeling beside Dean and pulling out the jacket-pillow. His brother's head sank to the mud, completely underwater now, his eyes pressed shut. Only a few bubbles still trailed up from his lips as Sam dipped his face into the water, sealed his mouth around his brother's, and breathed into him.
Dean's eyes stirred behind his eyelids.
Sam came up for air, repeated the underwater version of rescue breathing, feeling Dean's chest rise and fall under one hand. Then he clambered to his feet and turned away, to the woods.
The trees were plentiful and it wasn't hard to find a sturdy broken limb. Sam tested its tensile strength, and, satisfied, slid back down to the Impala. There was a creeping grey now at the edges of his vision and he couldn't feel his arms or legs, but it didn't seem to be slowing him down any and he ignored it. Even the rain and the pain of his injuries had faded from his awareness.
Back to Dean's side, Sam leaned down for another two breaths. Dean's eyes swam open on the second, giving him a hazy look of confusion. Sam clutched a handful of his brother's coat for support as he pushed himself up, and found a spot to wedge the branch in.
Sam leaned his weight on it, hearing the wood creak, then the car. And then the creak became a groan of metal as gravity weighed in. The Impala shuddered, and Dean's hand knocked against his foot again.
And then it was falling. Sam nearly went with it as the branch gave underneath him. With an impressive splash, the Impala landed back on its wheels, and promptly sank inches into the mud.
He had to act fast before it really became mired. Sam scrambled behind his brother, hooking his arms under Dean's, and pulled with all he had left in him and, from where he didn't know, then some.
There was a momentary tug of war, Sam and Dean versus car and mud and gravity and weakness. And just when Sam thought he was losing, Dean slid free with a splash and a sucking sound, falling back halfway up the embankment next to him. A moment later he was choking out water in heaving contractions.
Sam lay behind him, too spent to do anything else but drape an arm over Dean's side in limp encouragement and reassurance. His eyes had closed somewhere along the way and he was too tired to open them again, but he could feel Dean clearing his lungs and catching his breath. And then turning back to Sam, grabbing fistfuls of his borrowed, ruined shirt and yanking him weakly up out of the ditch. Sam made no effort to help, already teetering on the edge of unconsciousness and knowing any exertion would send him over. He'd done what he needed to.
As if in proof, he felt himself being turned, lifted, and propped against his still-shaking and wet brother. Dean nevertheless felt the lump on his head and gently manipulated his bad arm. "You broke out of the hospital, didn't you?" Sam heard him huff a laugh, and a hand patted his cheek with fondness and fatigue. "You can relax now, Sammy, I'll take it from here."
He smiled, trusting Dean would work it out somehow, and let himself fall into the dark. There would be someone waiting now when he came back out.
00000
"Mr. Baxter?"
He winced away from the voice, knowing it wasn't calling him but still troubled somehow by the summons. His head hurt, and the motion made him whimper.
Fingers slipped under his own in a loose but warm clasp. "C'mon, Sam, answer the pretty nurse."
Dean. Which made him Baxter. Sam sighed, body relaxing, and obediently said, "Yes?"
"Can you tell me your name and where you are?"
"Sam. Baxter. North America."
He heard Dean's snort. "Uh, we move around a lot, Ma'am—he doesn't know where we are half the time he hasn't been hit on the head." There was a shrug in his voice.
"Can you tell me how old you are, then?"
"Twenty-two," Sam murmured, the pillow comfortable and the bed warm, even though Dean was starting to tickle his palm now. Sam pulled away with half-hearted annoyance.
"Good. Now if we can just manage to keep you in bed and the new splint dry, you might even be released this week." She was teasing him, but Sam could only muster a crinkle of the mouth. "Okay," she said more gently, "you can go back to sleep now." Footsteps moved off, and Sam perversely opened his eyes in time to watch her leave.
Dean was enjoying the view, too, as Sam's gaze slid over to him. That looked to be about all he was enjoying, though; Dean was in a gown, holding himself cautiously, the rumpled bed behind him an indicator of where he'd been waiting for Sam to wake up. As he turned back, Sam's newly clear vision brought his brother's bruises and exhaustion into stark relief, and he wondered briefly if Dean was even supposed to be on his feet. But all he said softly was, "You look terrible."
A half-smile still hovered on Dean's lips, more habit than mirth. "The phrase 'pots and kettles' mean anything to you?" He sobered. "How're you feeling?"
Sam smiled. "Like I was in a car accident. What happened, anyway?"
Dean's face darkened. "Swerved to miss a raccoon or something and the car slid off the wet road. I guess you got thrown clear—when I woke up, you were gone." His eyes weren't as flat as he would have liked to believe, at least not to Sam.
Sam rolled carefully onto his side and tucked his good hand under the pillow. "Were we hunting?" he asked.
"Passing through. You don't remember?" His brother frowned.
"Just…bits and pieces. Joking around in the car, the rain. Nothing about an accident."
Dean looked taken aback. "Then how'd you—"
Sam almost smiled. "You weren't here. I just went back to where they found me and started looking."
"Yeah. Well." Dean's eyes slid over the room and he cleared his throat. "About that…"
"How's the car?" Sam interrupted him, because he didn't need to hear it.
Dean grimaced. "They towed her to the local shop. Soon as they let me out of here, I'm gonna go over, make sure they don't mess her up. It's not too bad considering—you probably wrecked it worse when you drove it through Constance's house."
Sam tried to laugh, breaking off with a flinch. "Yeah, well, I didn't think shooting a ghost in the face was doing much good."
"Saved you, didn't it?"
There was a too-full silence.
Dean cleared his throat. "Sam…"
"I know, you don't have to say it."
"Yeah, actually, I do," Dean looked at him intently. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Sam said, softly, wondering if they would be keeping track now because he owed a few thank-yous then himself. Dean was squirming already, though, and Sam suddenly grinned. "You know, you have really soft lips."
Dean flushed and stood with a growl, turning away.
Sam caught his sleeve as it started to slip away, effortlessly stopping Dean with his weak grasp. "If you want to thank me," he said, trying not to sound as desperate as he suddenly felt, "don't disappear on me while I'm sleeping again, okay?"
Dean's eyes were knowing as his face twisted in sarcasm. "Dude, in case you haven't noticed, we're roomies. You just," he made a shooing motion, "keep your hands and lips and everything else to yourself. I'm not goin' anywhere."
"You better not be," Sam murmured, and let him go before drifting off.
He knew Dean would stay close to home.
The End