Carry On Wayward Son

Spoilers : Asylum

Authors Notes: Okay so everybody has an asylum story but the idea just wouldn't leave. I hope I've done things a little differently. To be accompanied by classic driving rock as all things in life should be.

Disclaimer: As always characters/songs referenced are not mine and I am as impoverished upon posting this as I was when I started writing it.

Dean slams the thin wooden door to the motel room so hard that he can hear it splinter. He doesn't need x-ray vision to know that Sam is stood behind it staring at the door, that hurt puppy-dog look on his face as he ups the ante on the blame he's placing on himself.

Dean doesn't pause to contemplate this, he just knows it to be true, but right now he doesn't care. He pulls the Impala keys from his pocket and jogs to where the Impala is parked, barely ten steps away from their door, desperate with the need to get away. He open the car and slides inside the drivers seat. For a moment he just sits there, the silence fuelling his anger. How dare Sam? How dare he say those things after all Dean has tried to do for him? How could he bitch about Dean giving orders when all Dean was trying to do was keep him out of harms way, because Sam getting hurt would be the one thing that would push him over the edge.

Dean kicks out at the Impala, his heavy boot ringing off the foot-well. It's an action that he instantly regrets as it sends his tender body into spasms of agony from the usual myriad of bruises and his burning pitted chest that is likely to still be harbouring some rock salt. The hunter knows he should have cleaned it up, the salt stings the raw flesh and left untreated is liable to cause infection but he couldn't bear to hang around in that tiny motel room, the barrier brought up between him and his brother by today's events almost visible. So instead he'd gone in just long enough to grab a fresh tee shirt, changing facing the wall so Sam couldn't see the damage he'd inflicted, before grabbing his other coat, the leather one, and telling Sam 'don't wait up.'

Maybe he should have let Sam see, he thinks angrily, the little holes each filled to varying degrees with dried blood, each surrounded by it's own purpling bruise. Maybe it would be good for Sam to see the physical pain he causes, he so often seems to miss the emotional. It would remind him that his brother was only human and could never live up to be all those things he demanded of him. Except Sam had known it would hurt, that was kind of the point wasn't it, to hurt Dean. And Dean was under no illusions that his actions had all been Dr. Evil's doing. Sam didn't know that Dean had also been attacked by Ellicott, had to fight off his own surge of anger in order to get the job done.

Dean can feel Sam watching him from behind the tatty motel curtains so he starts the engine and it growls to life. The Rush song that had been playing earlier kicks in halfway through and Dean smiles at the relevance of the words, "Fly by night away from here, change my life again…" He pulls out of the motel parking lot and puts his foot to the floor as he turns onto the highway.

The road stretches out long and straight of him, lined by trees on either side for as far as the eye can see and even further, not another soul for miles and miles. The sky is completely cloudless and shines with stars. Dean realises it's been a long time since he's seen a sky so clear and that he's missed it. The moon, for reasons Dean never could quite figure out, is especially large tonight and only a few nights away from being full. It hangs low straight ahead in the distance so that it looks as though the road leads straight to it.

He lets the song play to the end before ejecting the cassette and replacing it with another one, this even more battered that the rest, played so often that its beginning to wear out, a mix that Dean made years ago of some of his favourites. As the opening bars of Lynyrd Skynyrd sound into the night Dean takes a deep sigh.

He has done this so many times before, just gotten into the car and gone for a drive, although not since he's had Sam back with him. The first time he had been barely fifteen. His teachers had been on his case for weeks 'his work is good when he applies himself but more often than not he just doesn't bother', homework piling up as each one was set aside in order to make way for weapons training and hand-to-hand combat, and he'd just gotten off a difficult job with his father and was feeling bruised and exhausted. He can't even remember what made him do it, some silly request from Sammy, who was still Sammy back then, that normally he would have done without thinking about it. That night though, it had been the last straw. He'd grabbed his father's keys and stormed out of the run-down apartment they'd been calling home for the past three months, slamming the door much like the way he'd slammed their latest door tonight. He was in the car and off before John had even emerged from the shower to see 'what the hell was going on?' He'd been taught to drive years earlier when a hunt had gone wrong leaving John incapable of driving himself and his young protégé back, so it already felt like second nature to the boy. He had placed his favourite tape into the player and blasted out to the highway, feeling instantly better just to be in motion. John had been furious when he'd returned hours later but it had been worth it.

After that, Dean had taken off often, whether to clear his head after a difficult job, or to avoid the arguments that became increasingly common between his father and his brother, or maybe just because they'd stayed in one place too long and he missed the feeling of the open road. A life of nomadism had sparked this need in him, so that if they stayed in one place more than a few weeks a pressure began to build that he could only describe as some kind of claustrophobia that could only be cured by motion.

Alone on the road, a collection of rock gods to keep him company, who always seemed to know just how he felt, he was stripped of all his responsibilities. It made him feel lighter somehow, as though his metaphorical burdens really did weigh heavily on his shoulders. It was a feeling of release that was better than any alcohol or those few joints he'd tried in junior high, and it worked every time.

The song rings out in the cold night air as Dean winds the window down to feel the cool breeze on his face "…'cause I'm free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change." The lyrics feel true and Dean wonders, as he does every time if tonight is the night he's just going to keep on driving and not look back, driving on into a new life where every day isn't a constant battle, where he'll have people he can count on and someone to love.

He drives until he looses track of time, just going straight as he feels all his anger and even his pain and weariness dissipate until there is only the road and the music and the low rumble of the Impala. It feels like it feels every time, like he can just keep on driving forever, until the last song on the cassette begins, "carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done…" and he suddenly knows he can't, not tonight.

His chest still hurts and Sam's words still burn, all the more because if he's truthful he believes every single one of them, and all that's mounted on the fear for his father and worry that he won't do the right thing and the sheer exhaustion of it all. But wounds heal, and they are still just words, meant but exaggerated in anger, in the same way they have always been. As he listens to the song, taking more notice of it's message than he normally does, he turns the car around. He may not be healed and all his burdens are waiting for him as soon as he walks back through that door, but he's not finished yet either and for now he feels like he could carry on.

The End

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