A/N: Welcome to the prologue of Disorientation. This is a short fic, five chapters, and it's already written, so I'll be posting it over the course of the week, according to how much of my homework I'm not doing. It's set Pre-Series; Sam is around fourteen. There will be several OC's, who I hope will not come off as Mary or Gary Stu's. On the technical side: how much do I know about retrograde amnesia? Only what I remember from my Psych class. Please forgive any grammar or technical errors, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I'm making tons of money from this. I own Supernatural. That's exactly why I am sitting in a college dorm pointedly not doing my English homework. Why bother with English when I own the sheer awesomeness of Supernatural?

Disorientation

Prologue

"Son?" The voice sounded like it was a million miles away. "Son, can you hear me?"

His mind felt so foggy. He tried to focus, but it was hard. He struggled to open his eyes, struggled to make the face in front of him come into focus. Looking at that face was like looking through water. He could make out eyes and lips and a dark hat perched atop the man's head, but they were all just blurry images without the sharp-definition he was used to.

"Try to stay awake, kid. Everything will be okay."

His eyelids fluttered; darkness was growing the corners of his blurry vision, lurking, waiting to sweep him under in a dark, heavy, unconscious world. He tried to get his lips to move, tried to say something, but his body wouldn't respond to his commands.

"Just try to stay awake a little bit longer." The voice said.

He tried to obey the plea, but the darkness that was swimming around him closed in, dragging him under.

He didn't even feel his eyes close.


He woke groggily to the sound of beeping. It registered in his mind that the sound was familiar, but he couldn't place it. When he opened his eyes to the white ceiling above his head and mint green curtains next to him, he was struck by a feeling that he should know exactly where he was. He was also struck by a feeling that he shouldn't like the place.

He moved a little, testing to see if his limbs worked. Assured that he could move he struggled to sit up and take in his surroundings.

Footsteps clicked against the tile floor, and two small, firm hands were on his chest, keeping him down. A pretty face, framed by a red bob, appeared in front of him. "It's okay, hon. Don't try to move. I'll have the doctor in just a sec."

Doctor?

The woman disappeared and he sank back against the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He tried to concentrate on what had happened and where he was, but the thoughts kept slipping away from him, disappearing like water through his fingers.

The red-haired woman appeared again, a man with an old-fashioned handlebar mustache next to her. "You're going to sit up now, okay?" He nodded, and she pressed a button. The bed he was laying on began to move, the end with his head moving vertically. She adjusted his pillows. "Better?"

He didn't do anything. He could see the whole room now, but he could also see the wires and tubes connected to his body, the beeping instruments surrounding his bed, and the bandages on his arms and on his chest.

Handlebar-Mustache gave what he supposed was a comforting smile. "It's good to see you awake, son. I'm Dr. Mutello. We need to ask you a few questions, okay?"

He nodded and ran his tongue across his dry lips, parting them. The red-haired woman—she was a nurse, he realized—lifted a glass of cold water to his lips. The liquid slid down his throat, a soothing balm to his parched mouth.

"Okay." Mutello said. "Can you tell us your name?"

He opened his mouth to answer and then snapped it closed. "I—." He knew this. He knew this. How could he forget his own name? What in the hell had happened? "I don't remember." He whispered, as though he couldn't bear to speak the words louder, for fear that if he did they would somehow change his entire life.

The doctor and the nurse exchanged glances. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

He felt something bubble up inside of him, an emotion that he couldn't put a name to until it burst within him. Fear. Mute, he shook his head, his eyes rolling wildly with barely constrained panic. They kept looking at him and he forced himself to unstick his lips. "I don't remember anything." He swallowed. "What happened? Why don't I remember?"

"We'll need to run some tests, son." Mutello said, shifting his weight to the side. "But I believe you may have a form of retrograde amnesia." At the blank look he received the doctor explained. "Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall events from the past. You probably don't remember, but you received a head wound." His hand flew to his head where he found gauze and pain. "It's been stitched up. But a head wound can cause retrograde amnesia." Mutello shifted again. "We are going to let you rest today; tomorrow we'll run some tests, okay?"

He tried to nod and found that it sent a sharp, lancing pain through his head. He winced and stilled; the dull pain that he hadn't noticed upon awaking was growing more and more aggressive.

"Nurse Sommers will take care of you, okay?" He didn't nod and he didn't respond verbally either, just stared between the doctor and the nurse. "I'll see you tomorrow." He walked out of the room, leaving the nurse standing there, smiling in an attempt at comfort.

"Are you in pain?" She said.

He tried to nod again and found that he could only wince. She made a tsking sound and crossed to his bed, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a syringe. She injected the liquid into a tube and he watched it race towards his body with an almost morbid fascination. "That should kick in fast. It'll make you sleepy too, so be ready for it."

He opened his mouth to say something but found his eyes already fluttering. The nurse smiled at him and lowered him into a horizontal position again.

For the second time, he found the world pulled away as he stumbled into darkness.


The next time his eyes flickered open, he felt as though he'd been sleeping for a thousand years. Rip Van Winkle, he thought, the man who slept for twenty years. Immediately that thought was followed by another one. I can remember Rip Van Winkle, but I can't remember my own goddamn name?

"Oh good," a faintly familiar voice said, "you're awake." The nurse's face appeared over him, still framed by that fire-engine, straight-from-a-bottle red hair. "Would you like to sit up?"

He nodded, and she helped him into a sitting position again. "How do you feel?"

How did he feel? He was in a hospital, he couldn't remember his name, who he was, or what had happened to him, he didn't even know where he was, and he felt like he had been sleeping for ten years while the world just passed around him. He stared at the woman, and she chuckled.

"Stupid question. Sorry." She gave him a smile. "Are you in pain?"

He shook his head. His neck was a little stiff and he felt…weird, but he didn't hurt. The inevitable yet rolled through his mind before he could stop it.

"Do you remember anything?"

He shook his head again. She helped him take a sip of water and he reveled in the feeling. "What happened to me?" He said. The nurse paused in her motion of checking his chart and looked at him. Slowly, she put the chart back in its place and walked towards him. "We don't know, hon." She said, her words just as slow as her movements. "You were brought in the other night." She paused, licked her lips. "They found you on the side of the road, unconscious and barely breathing. One of the cops managed to get you awake there, but you passed out again. They brought you here." Her eyes flickered over him. "You've got a nasty bump on your head, scratches and bruises all over. A couple of broken ribs were the big problem; you're heavily medicated right now, so you probably can't feel them. You won't until you try to move."

He blinked at her, feeling the wild panic surge through him again. "Should you have told me that?"

She gave him a crooked smile. "Probably not. But you don't deserve to be kept in the dark." She tilted her head and surveyed him. "I never introduced myself, did I? Julia Sommers." She licked her lips. "We've been calling you John around here. You know, John Doe?"

John. The name danced through his mind, tantalizingly familiar. He knew someone named John. But it wasn't his name. It felt wrong as his name, too wrong to be acceptable. But, somewhere there was a John in his life.

"Not right, is it?" He shook his head and she frowned. "You need a name, for right now at least. We can't just call you son or hon or boy." She stared at him long and hard. "Is there any name that pops into your head?"

He closed his eyes, thinking, willing the memories to rise through the fog they were hidden within, but they stayed stubbornly lost, locked behind some door in his mind. Opening his eyes he shook his head.

She sighed, and then smiled slightly. It was, he thought, a bittersweet smile. "You know, I always said that if I had a son I would name him Alexander. Alex." She looked at him, and he thought he saw some ember of hope in her eyes. "How does that sound?"

Alex. It wasn't familiar, not even a little bit. It set off no bells in his head. It wasn't right…but it wasn't wrong. He could live with it.

Slowly, he nodded.

"Alex it is then." She smiled down at him. "It's nice to meet you, Alex."


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