Out of the Fire

What would have happened if Sam was able to use his telekinetic powers to save Jessica from the fire?

This story was requested by Ormus45.

Chapter One: Memory of Fire

Sam stared at his hands. They were the color of raw meat, cracked and blistered. It looked as if his skin were ready to melt away, drip to the gutter and slide into the drain. His gaze shifted to the black asphalt beneath his feet. Shifting blue, white and reds lights reflected off the shiny surface slick with water. Water showered the back of his neck, but there was no rain. The spray came from a hose attached to a fire hydrant and pointed at the window of his smoldering apartment.

A siren wailed to life, so close Sam could feel his ears vibrate. He looked up to see the red ambulance dart through the line of emergency personnel and around the corner. He only hoped they could drive fast enough.

He didn't know what he would do if she died.

He didn't really know how she had survived. The events of the evening were a blur, but that didn't bother Sam. He was used to it. The action in the middle of a fight never registered in the memory until later. There was no thought in those moments, only reflex, and the details were always a matter of guesswork. An assembly of moments connected by logic to fill in the blanks.

Sam remembered walking through the front door and the smell of cookies fresh in the air. He remembered the promising light from the bedroom, soft and welcoming. He had crashed on the bed, cookie in his mouth, utterly relaxed. Safe. Home.

Then the warm moisture on his head. The familiar smell of blood. He opened his eyes and there she was. Pinned to the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach, mouth open in a silent scream. It was a scene from his father's nightmares.

That was where the memory blurred, adrenaline dimming his hindsight. He remembered the panic tugging at his gut, and the rush of energy that came with desperation. He had jumped, arms that had always been too long suddenly too short. Flames blossomed around Jessica, and Sam fell backwards. He knew he fell, but somehow he had pulled as well. He didn't know how, it was like flexing a muscle that shouldn't have been there. Sharp pain split his head, and then she was in his arms and Dean's arms were around his shoulders. He held Jess tight to his chest and felt her warm blood spill across his shirt while Dean shoved him hard through the door, down the stairs, into fresh air.

He held her there on the curb, held her guts inside her belly until the paramedics arrived with a stretcher, an IV, and bandages. They wrapped her up and carried her away and now she was gone.

He knew how fast a wound like that would bleed. She had been unconscious before they were out the door. Would she even make it to the hospital?

Sam moved to wrap his arms around his chest, but strong hands caught his and he hissed in pain.

"Easy, Sammy, easy." Dean's voice was gentle, calming. "Second ambulance is on its way. You'll get the good pain meds this time."

Something cool and slimy moved over the ruined skin. Sam stared; a green plant stem, cut in half, full of goo. He raised his eyes to see his brother hunched over his hand. A woman in a colorful robe stood nearby, cutting stems off of plant with fat, cactus-like limbs. Sam's fought for the right word; he knew what this was. Aloe. Good for burns.

"Dean." His voice was sharp with pain.

"I know it hurts, Sam, but this will help. I can hear the sirens coming. You'll have a real doctor soon."

Sam shook his head. "No, that's not-"

"Hey." Dean dropped the aloe and gripped his shoulder tight enough to leave a bruise. "I've got you. You're gonna be ok."

"Jess-"

"I know. She was still alive when they left. We couldn't do anything more. Let the doctors do their job. We'll be there when she wakes up after surgery."

Sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder. "That's our ride." Dean put the aloe plant aside and flagged the paramedics down. He put a hand under Sam's arm and pulled him to his feet. "We need help over here! This man needs a hospital."

Hospital. Sam shook his head and pulled away. "No, Dean. We have to find this thing. If it came after Jess, it could try again."

"I know." Dean's voice was tight, and he refused to let go of Sam's arm. "But you can't shoot, Sammy, not with those paws. We can't investigate the apartment, not while it's as hot as a frying pan. Jessica's at the hospital, and that's where you need to be."

The paramedics burst out of the ambulance and came toward them at a jog. They stopped when they saw Sam on his feet, and Dean pointed to the hands. "I was just telling my brother here he gets all the bells and whistles. One way, non-stop, fast as you can go. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir." The paramedic's answer was brisk, her face impassive as she took in the damaged flesh. She didn't touch Sam's hands, just gestured to the back of the ambulance, where the doors open and waiting. "Right this way. Are you riding along?"

Dean cast a glance at Sam, then back at his car. Police were circling the scene. Dean squeezed Sam's arm, and let go. "I'll follow."

Sam allowed himself to be passed from brother to paramedic and loaded into the back of the ambulance. There was conversation floating around him. Words like 3rd-degree, morphine, and skin grafts. They had no meaning. Sam stared out the window at the charred walls that had once been his apartment.

Gone. Everything was gone in the space of half an hour.

The ambulance jerked into motion, and Sam felt his body sway as they rounded a corner. The sirens started again, an urgent, pleading wail that pulsed through his ears. It continued all the way to Palo Alto General Hospital.

Please don't be dead. Please, say I wasn't too late. Please, Jess. Don't be dead.

o0o

Details. The fine art of hunting was always in the details. Bobby Singer had taught the Winchester brothers to track in the forest, and because of it Dean knew a lot more about plants, mud, and animal prints than the person who wrote the nature guide book. He knew where animals made their dens, where they ate, where they drank, and what time of day the moved about. Animals were simple creatures. They stuck to the same habits.

So did monsters. Vengeful spirits, werewolves, it didn't matter. They all had rules, and they played by them without fail. He could see a kill, and name the monster. They killed the same victims, in the same way, at the same time, every time.

Some were less specific than others. Werewolves ate hearts. Kitsune ate brains. Well, glands in the brain, but was there really a difference? Spirits didn't eat at all, but they wrecked the bodies those they killed, leaving some kind of a mark. Chains around the wrists or a gash in the throat always pointed the way. Often, Dean might have to go through records with a fine-tooth comb to find the pattern that fit, but it was always there.

Gutted and pinned to a ceiling before being immolated was about as specific a mark as Dean had ever seen. He didn't know what had done it. He didn't know why.

Same date. Same time. Same place; Sammy's bedroom.

Sammy's bedroom.

That was the detail that Dean couldn't shake. The fire in '83 had occurred in a baby's bedroom. A monster that went after babies and killed the mother if she got in the way. Or that lay in wait in nurseries, just to kill the mother. It had been following a pattern laid out by its kind. No specific targets, just monster and prey.

But this had happened to Sam twice. It suggested something Dean had never seen in a monster before. It suggest complex thought. It suggested an ability to break the rules. It suggested a specific target.

Why would a monster target Sam twenty-two years apart? It didn't track with anything Dean knew about the things he hunted. He stared at his phone and the long list of calls to his father. No new messages in his inbox. No missed calls.

Why would Dad vanish now? Why wouldn't he respond to this?

Dean shifted in the uncomfortable hospital chair and fingered the amulet hanging from his neck. Sammy. What would have happened if Dean had not been there tonight? The words of Dad's last message echoed in his mind. We're all in danger. And the part he hadn't let Sam hear. Go to your brother and get him out of Palo Alto.

He had been so focused on his brother, he hadn't given a second thought to the girlfriend. Jessica. The girl whose aunts and cousins made casseroles and cookies last time Sam was in the hospital. The girl whose relatives had accepted Sam as one of their own. They had taken Sam into their own family, and Dean couldn't help but love them. They cared for his brother. They gave him the home he had always wanted.

Because life on the road had never been good enough. Because the Winchester family had never been good enough for Sam.

Dean hated that Sam had left him behind. Dean was angry at his brother for wanting a different life. But Dean couldn't be mad at Sam for loving this girl. Jessica Moore was everything Dean could hope for his brother. Which was why he hadn't shoved Sam out the door yet, why they were waiting here in the ER even though Sam's hands had been bandaged hours ago.

"Dean?" Sam stood in the doorway, face pale. His chest was bare, the shirt cut off and tossed in the trash by the ER staff. His chest was covered in bandages and his hands encased in gauze mittens. Sam hadn't been caught in the fire, but Jessica had, and Sam had put out the flames that ate at her clothing with his own body. They were lucky the burns weren't too severe, but they would still take weeks to heal. Sam would have permanent scars, but it wasn't Sam's hands that Dean was worried about right now. It was his eyes. They still burned with the memory of the fire. Etched into the retina, the flames consumed everything he saw.

Dean had seen that look once before on his father's face. It made the small four-year-old huddled in a forgotten corner of his mind quiver with fear. The last time he saw that look, he had lost his father. Gone was the man who played football and gave bedtime tickles, who read Curious George and loved to fix cars. In his place had been a man who could never put his gun down, could never stop driving, stop killing, stop searching for the thing that killed the woman he loved.

The memory of that fire clouded every second of John's life. It was only in Sam that Dean had found relief from the flames. Sam had no memory of the fire. He still smiled, still laughed, still played. Sam's innocence had been Dean's refuge. Even after Sam learned about monsters, about hunting, he still had a freedom that neither John nor Dean possessed. He was free of the memory of that night in his nursery.

Until now. The look in Sam's eye was the mirror image of the raw rage and pain that had looked at Dean from his father's eyes every day of his life.

Every day until today. Today, John was absent. Today, the man who always called no matter what happened couldn't be bothered to answer his phone. Now, there was only an empty stretch of silence and the worn old journal cradled in Dean's hands. His voice mail message might as well be shouted at the wind. His father was gone, and now John's obsession stared at him out of Sam's eyes.

"Any news yet?"

Sam perched on the edge of his bed and shook his head. "No. She's still in surgery."

Dean nodded. "Alright. So we wait. Are those painkillers working?" Dean rattled the bottle he had collected from the pharmacy. He intended to make sure Sam took every last one on schedule. He didn't need more pain, not today.

Sam just shrugged. His mind was somewhere else, lost in flame. Dean could see the wheels turning, lines of logic falling into place until only one conclusion remained. There was only one conclusion here. "Dean, what happened? That was just like how Mom died. Down to the last detail. Same date, same time. Do you think-do you think this had something to do with me?"

"No, Sam. How could this have anything to do with you?" Dean knew the truth was not the answer Sam needed right now.

"It was my room, over my bed-it just-it seems-" There were more words on the edge of his tongue, but Sam just shook his head. He stilled, and glared at the wall. "We have to find this thing. We have to kill it."

"We can't get into the apartment until it's cooled off. They may not even have the fire out yet."

"Yeah, but this is our chance, Dean. We know it's nearby. We have to find it."

"Right. Ok." Dean tossed the pill bottle at Sam, and watched his brother fumble to catch the small plastic tube in his gauze-mittens. The pills fell to the ground with a clatter, and Sam let out a hiss of frustration. "Sammy, you can't carry a gun, much less shoot. You're not going anywhere tonight."

o0o

The world was a haze, a mix of memory and white that faded in and out and blurred together. Jess floated somewhere in between, uncertain as to what was real, what was a memory, and what a dream. A hospital room filled with beeping monitors and blurry faces slowly swam into view, but fire crackled at the edges.

It had attacked her flesh, hot and sharp, the smell of charred meat and an agony that lanced through her entire body. She was numb now. A tube ran from her arm to a saline bag, and something made out of opiates must be flowing freely. She could feel the bandages on her back and the stiffness in her belly. She had been attacked from behind, and in front.

Brady had driven the knife home. She must remember that. If every other detail were lost, she must remember that name. They would ask, she knew. They would go to arrest him and put him in jail so he could not do this to anyone else ever again.

No. Wait. That was wrong. The police could not arrest him because Brady was not Brady. The flash of black in his eyes had given it away. She had not been betrayed; her friend had been possessed. All so that Sam Winchester would suffer.

"Sam." Jess whispered the name, and instantly there was a hand in hers.

"I'm here, sweetie." The voice was warm, soft, familiar. Her mother hovered over the bed. "How do you feel?"

"Sam." Jess whispered again. She shifted, but her limbs were not working. She lay perched on her side, the only part of her not hurt. Jess squeezed the hand that held hers. "Where is he? Is he alright?"

He had reached for her, reached into the flames to save her. The last thing she remembered was being held in his arms.

Jess lifted her head, but her mother placed a hand on her neck. "Shhh, it's alright. He's alright. He saved you. He only had a few burns." Sandy turned away and exchanged words with another. Dad? He gave a short shake of his head and came to hover near his wife's shoulder.

"He's hovering in the hallway, but he won't come in. I think he blames himself."

Jess closed her eyes and let out a soft laugh. Even that made it feel as if the fire had blossomed across her back again. "Stupid. Please. I need to see him."

"He's just pacing the hall. He should come in before he wears a hole in it." Her sister Jenna was here too. "I'll get him. Hey Sam! Jess says you're an idiot. Get your ass in here!"

The weight on the bed shifted. The people in her vision swam out of view. Then Sam was there, his head bent over her hand, his hand stroking her hair. She could feel the absence, her blonde mane gone. But he ran his fingers through the charred ends and cried into her palm.

"I'm sorry, Jess. I should never have-I'm so sorry." He knew more than he said. He held secrets he couldn't share in front of her family. Secrets he thought she didn't know.

It seemed the time had come to talk about that.

"Shhh." Jess lifted her thumb to wipe his cheek. "Can't take it back. I wouldn't let you if you tried. You're mine, Sam Winchester."

"The doctor's say you'll be ok, Jess. I promise this won't happen again. You'll be ok."

You can't change the way the world turns, Sam. There was more to say, but all she could do was squeeze his hand and let the world fade away again. There was no need to fight against sleep. She was alive, and Sam was by her side. The rest could wait.

o0o

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