Episode 909
"Dirty Water Dying"
Chapter One
He is in the back of the car, his knees are bent and he is lying in the back of the car. But his knees don't hit the back of the passenger seat, his shoulders aren't hunched forward trying to fit, his head isn't quirked up at an odd sideways angle against the door, it's propped up on a lap.
There's blood in his mouth, there's a warm hand on his side. He is twelve.
"Shh, Sammy. It's okay."
Dean, Dean.
His leg is wet and filled with heat, as he wakes up the ache grows and it's sharp with every bump in the road, they're going fast he realizes, so fast, and it's nighttime, and Dad is so quiet.
He shouldn't have been out, he wasn't allowed out, but Dean had forgotten the binding thing, the string Uncle Bobby had given them to bind the monster and Dad and Dean were going to get killed if they didn't have what they needed, so Sam had gone out in the snow to find them, to give it to them, and -
He hadn't seen it. Dad was yelling and he should have listened, but he needed to give Dad the string, and he hadn't seen the monster and then all he saw was Dean's face, worried and pale in the moonlight, crying and yelling, angry, scared-
He is lying with his head in Dean's lap. One of Dean's hands is on his side, soothing and heavy and warm. The other is smoothing Sam's hair, and Sam is hurt, he's hurt and he's dying, he knows it, and he's sorry, he's sorry-
"Did we get it?" he says, and in the front, Dad draws in a sharp breath through his nose, stiff and annoyed.
Dean frowns. "Yeah. We got it."
"Dean-"
He doesn't go on. He doesn't need to. Dean squeezes him at the hip, smoothes his hair down over his ear, his hand comes to rest on Sam's forehead, heavy and warm and solid Dean's hand on his forehead, and Dean says, "You're okay, kiddo. You're gonna be okay."
He hums. The tune is so familiar, but Sam can't place it. Dean is singing, but he can't make out the words. The radio isn't on, but he hears the gentle unresolving chords, the lyrical lead guitar line over top of the jangling strum on repeat, the story in the words he can't make out, Dean is almost plaintive, like this song is for Sam, to Sam, like he's afraid Sam will leave him someday, like Sam can ever leave, or like he'd ever want to. Like he can see a life for himself beyond this car, beyond Dad and Dean and the smell of blood and gunpowder and leather, beyond the soothing bump of the road as sure as any lullabye.
Like there is another place besides Dean that could ever be home.
He did not wake up in the dungeon. He was in his bed, warm, wounds dressed, he could feel the stitches pull, he could feel the ache of his relocated thumb. His memory of the last couple of weeks faded back to him like remembering a dream, the feel of it more vibrant and clear than the actual details.
Flowers in a silver crown, the bright bright red of sacred (tainted) blood in a porcelain bowl. The sulphur in the back of his throat. Days and days and days of hoping, of giving up.
Dean had come. Dean had come.
He half expected Dean to be sitting there by his bed when he opened his eyes. But he was alone, afternoon light streaming through the window. No idea how long he'd been sleeping. He'd been pushing it, tacking shoelaces to the end of his rope for God knew how long hoping for Dean, holding on for Dean.
That boy can't wait for you to go and stay gone. He's been watching your ass for what, thirty years now?
That year he spent away while you were with grandpappy, that was the best year of his life.
He misses Purgatory when the alternative is you.
But Dean had come, Dean had come.
Not to kill him, like Sam had briefly entertained. Of course not.
But how long would that last now? Now that he was - now that he had-
"I know, right?" Lucifer stalked the room, arms folded, gesturing casually outward. "I mean you're kinda damaged goods, seriously. You realize this is never going to be something you really get over, right? You'll never get rid of it. Just like me."
Sam shook his head. Blew out a breath. He could ignore Satan, for now he could, he had so much practice-
But god, the blood, the wrongness of being drained, that monster's mouth on him, those people singing, the children with their crown of silver and flowers, the sick sweet smell of them, if he never smelled the green grass scent of marigolds or field flowers again, that would be okay. Just another thing he could never find comfort in again. Like food, like sleep, like the warm press of complete dark, like someone's hand on his forehead singing, like everything-
He didn't deserve to feel like shit over it. He'd invited this poison into his life years ago. Their lives, and Kevin and Charlie didn't even know the danger he'd soon be. He did not deserve pity.
But God, he was scared.
Dean sat outside Sam's room, legs splayed out in front of him, hands loose in his lap, staring. The muffled sounds of Sam's hitched breathing told him when Sam was awake, not quite sobbing - Sam hadn't really cried in forever - but this hissing, shuddering sound, or sometimes mumbling conversation. He knew when Sam was asleep again because those defences came down and a soft, high keening wheedled into Dean's head from behind those doors. And that's when Dean went in, made sure there was water for Sam to drink, something he could try to eat. He checked Sam's bandages, his fever, he swiped a damp cloth over his forehead, the kid was just out.
But he didn't have a fever and his wounds were healing, and he wasn't coughing - he was okay.
Dean laid his head back against the wall outside Sam's room. Two days Sam had been waking and sleeping, two days Dean had been avoiding him. There was blood on his hands, and for Sam, he'd fucking bathe in it, but it didn't make it easy. That girl Constance, the girl Sam had begged Dean to protect - Still, Sam was alive, Sam was home, Sam was going to get through detox, and when it was over-
Well, he didn't know. A good long talk, maybe. Just to make sure Sam knew ... whatever he was suppose to know. Fuck.
Sam said dungeon. But Sam wasn't in the drying out stage yet, and Dean was content to say fuck whatever you want for now, for as long as possible, no one's going into that dungeon, never again would Sam be locked up in that dungeon, never again would it be Dean's doing, never never never-
But he sat outside Sam's room and waited and listened and had no idea what to do with him when the shit started, because he couldn't stay in his own room and who knew how soon it would start up, who knew how much they had made him drink-
"Hey."
Dean looked up.
"You've been sitting out here for two days," Kevin said. "You need to eat something. You need a shower."
"I can't, if he - I can't."
"Yeah, I get it." Kevin looked off, obviously impatient and frustrated, but no way was Dean telling this kid all of Sam's shit. "Whatever. But you owe me this much, okay?"
"Owe you-?"
"Of the two of us, who thought Sam had ditched us, and who thought there had to be something else going on?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "You didn't find him, okay?" But Kevin was right about one thing. Dean had given up on Sam. Again. Fuck, he didn't know how to do this.
"Whatever. Look. He's resting, he's healing. Come on. Shower." He held out a hand.
Dean looked back at the door behind him. Sam was quiet. And Dean did reek. And his back was on fire where the fenix had got her claws into him. And soon things would not be quiet anymore. "Fine." He took Kevin's hand and let himself be heaved to his feet.
He almost nodded off under the hot shower, thank god for annoying injuries. He let the cleansing water pour over him, reveled in it. Sam showered like seventeen times a day, but he didn't enjoy it the way Dean did. Sam did it because he felt impure - though Dean was just putting that together in the last few months, because of Sam's fevered admission that he'd felt unclean since he was a kid. But looking back, it was obvious - long showers after Ruby, red-rubbed skin after he started having visions, using up all the hot water after school when he was a teen, which Dean had just thought was a teen boy being a teen boy. He wouldn't have made such fun of him, smirked and thrown socks at him, if he'd known the truth.
Dean scrubbed his hands through his hair. The water around his feet was pink. He only ever felt tainted, unclean, when it was Sam's blood on him, Sam's blood painting him, Sam's blood on his shirt or on his knuckles, another failure, another betrayal to add to Sam's collection, the ways in which Dean had let him down-
He switched the water off. Worst shower ever. He probably needed some butterflies to hold the scratches on his back together, should have disinfected them and gotten someone to sew them up as soon as he'd gotten home. Whatever.
Kevin was waiting for him outside, dragged him through the common rooms where Dean glanced up at Sam's door - but then into the kitchen, where Kevin and Charlie had scrubbed everything and bought groceries, like real groceries. Onions, potatoes, tomatoes - he went to the fridge and found beef, chicken cutlets.
"Sam can't eat any of this-"
"The rest of us eat, though," Kevin pointed out.
"Sam told me," Charlie said, "that you used to cook, that if we got you ingredients, you'd cook." She shrugged. "This isn't about Sam, okay? This is about you."
Dean closed his eyes. Sam was upstairs, Sam could need him at any moment, he couldn't just be cooking-
The handle of a knife slid into his hand and he took it.
Fuck it. He - they had a family here. A family he wanted to keep safe, a family he needed to provide for. He wasn't used to having to spread it out, Sam and other people, but this wasn't a choice between them. It was an expansion. Sam would have wanted it. Sam loved it when Dean cooked.
He was lost in chopping the late vegetables for a second pot of stew when a soft cough interrupted the bickering nerds.
"Sam!" Charlie said, rushing toward him where he wavered in the doorway, one arm wrapped around his aching chest. Dean read off the list in his head by reflex: two broken ribs, bruised ones, that really gross bite wound, kid shouldn't be up- Sam held up a hand to stave Charlie off, but smiled.
"I smelled cooking-"
Dean went white. "I'm sorry, dude. I thought you were out. I didn't think-"
"It's okay. Dean, it's okay." Sam smiled, tired, but genuine. "I think, um. Actually." He watched the boiling pot, licked his lips nervously. "I could go for some stew, if there's enough. I can just pick out the-"
"Wait a few minutes, and I'll have this veggie-only version ready for ya, how about that."
Sam watched him, mouth open. Then he nodded. Dean grinned. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Dean knew what Sam's complaint was gonna be, but it made him feel good to guess anyway. He turned back to the burbling pot, shaking his head as Charlie and Kevin hovered over Sam. Sam waved off their help, chided them with I got all the way downstairs all by myself, ya know and they talked stern at him about doing that in the first place and it was so nice, so close, and Dean knew he was going to have to send them away for the next few days, once the shit started, but for now it was home, it was family.
"So what's with the appetite," he said, kinda making conversation, kinda checking Sam's status.
Sam stopped mid-whatever he was saying to Charlie. "Um. I dunno. I just feel okay right now. Maybe um."
Dean turned. Sam was watching him, but the way he glanced at Kevin lining up a rolled up ball of paper to throw at Charlie was a question: what do they know?
"Maybe this whole getting kidnapped thing kinda shocked your system," he said, so Sam wouldn't have to think something up. "Your body's forgetting the Trials crap for now because it knows you need sustenance."
Sam watched him a moment, then he nodded slow. "Yeah. Maybe."
It wasn't a logical argument, Sam had been on the verge of starvation for months it seemed. If his body was going to forget the Trials in favor of survival, it woulda done it before now. Dean set down a bowl of veggie stew in front of Sam, watched Sam while he ate, the first bite, Sam's eyes closed in such relief, bliss even. When this batch was going to be Kevin's, Dean had lined up a bunch of spices, but with Sam's appearance, he ditched most of them and settled for simplicity. For Sam even the bland version must have been heaven. He rolled that first bite around in his mouth, swallowed. Dean thought the kid might cry. But he just took another bite, and another, until his hands started to shake and his eyes started to drift closed, and that was enough.
Sam's spoon dipped into his bowl and stayed, he breathed himself steady a few moments.
"Sammy?"
Sam nodded, to no one, or to someone only he could see, whatever, and pushed back from the table. "I'm gonna-"
When he didn't go on, Charlie touched his shoulder. "We'll help-"
"No. No, I'm good." Sam looked up at Dean, smiled this sad smile. "I just want um. Nobody get up." Sam got up, hands hovered around him, but he got up on his own, careful, but he did it, and he looked at Dean again. "Thank you." Serious as prayer. Somber as a funeral.
The three of them watched him go. When he was safely out the door, safely out of earshot, Charlie hissed, "Are you ever gonna tell us what they did to him? I mean besides the obvious."
Dean pressed his lips together. "No. Eat."
Sam said he needed some quiet. And that was fine. Dean would give him some quiet, but if he was well enough to get downstairs, well enough to eat, real food for the first time in however long, he was well enough to need some talking, to do some talking, to get his bearings and maybe he'd be okay using Dean as a compass for now. So he gave him an hour, watched the kids eat and stopped a food fight before it started, what were they, twelve? And then he went up to knock on Sam's door.
No answer.
"Come on, Sammy," he said. Silence. "Okay, I'm comin' in, not because I don't respect your right to privacy or whatever bullshit I'm supposed to be respecting, but because for all I know you can't actually answer me. Got it?"
He waited another couple of seconds, then tried the door. Thank god it was unlocked, or he'd be replacing it sooner rather than later.
Sam's room was empty.
