A/N: Welcome to my first season 9 story! I loved the premiere, but I thought that it was missing how Dean got Sam to the hospital, so I took it upon myself to make that happen. I hope you like it!

Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural, this would be in the episode, not on this website.

Barely Holding On

By gammadolphin

"How do I stop?"

Those four simple words sent a tide of relief flooding through Dean's entire body, unraveling the knots of tension that had formed at Naomi's warning, and grown when he had seen how desperate Sam was to sacrifice himself. Those words meant that Dean had gotten there in time, that Sam would be safe.

"Just let it go," he said soothingly, pulling a bandana from his pocket and approaching his brother.

"I can't," said Sam, the fear and pain in his voice hitting Dean like a blow to the stomach. "It's in me, Dean. You don't know what this feels like."

No, but he should. It should have been him suffering the pain of these trials, should have been him risking his life for the world. But instead it was Sam, again, and all Dean could do was try his best to support him through it.

"Hey, listen, we'll figure it out, okay?" he said reassuringly as he wrapped the bandana tightly around Sam's bleeding, glowing hand. "Just like we always do. Come on."

He pulled Sam into his arms, which he had wanted to do since he realized that his brother had heard him talking to Cas.

"You think I screw up everything I try. You think I need a chaperone, remember?"

Dean had wanted to take his words back the instant that they had left his lips. He should have realized just how deeply they, and all of the others he had said over the years, had been hurting Sam.

"Come on," he repeated, holding his little brother tightly as Sam collapsed against him. "Let it go, okay? Let it go, brother."

Dean closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of his brother and thanking whoever was listening that he had been fast enough to save him. He never wanted to let Sam out of the safety of his arms.

"Hey, Dean," said Sam, pulling away. He showed Dean his arms, from which the unnatural orange glow of the trials was fading.

"See?" said Dean with another surge of relief. Because that was good, right? It meant that Sam was going back to normal, that he would be fine.

But then Sam cried out in pain, and Dean's stomach dropped, a chill tearing through him as he watched his little brother begin to crumple.

"Sammy?" he said in concern, catching the taller man before he could hit the ground. His knees buckled under the weight, but there was no way in hell that he was going to drop his brother. Sam screamed again, and Dean began to haul him to the door of the dilapidated church, his only thought to get him to safety.

"Sam?" he called again. "I got you, little brother. You're gonna be just fine."

He did not know whom he was trying to reassure. Because he did not know how to deal with this, had no idea how to save Sam from whatever was currently decimating his body. He longed for an enemy that he could see, that he could fight and make bleed. But there wasn't one, just the invisible poison of the trials. The brothers stumbled to the car before Sam let out another cry of pain and his legs gave out in earnest, and Dean could hold him up no longer.

"Sam? Sam!" Dean called, lowering his brother to the muddy ground as gently as he could, each of Sam's rasping, tortured gasps for air sending another pulse of fear shooting through his system. "Cas!" he shouted, desperate for the angel's help. "Castiel! Where the hell are you?"

Every damn time the angel needed him, he had been there, and now that Sam was hurt…

"Sammy?" Dean said again, knowing that his brother could not respond, but desperate to know that he was still there, that Sam could still hear Dean and know that he was with him.

But Dean's anger at his friend morphed into a fresh wave of panic as gleaming arcs of light began to appear in the dark sky. To the ignorant eye, the glowing streaks could have been mistaken for a meteor shower. But Dean knew better.

"No, Cas," he whispered. He watched in horror as the projectiles plummeted closer and closer to the earth, feeling Sam jump as the first one touched down, sending out a shockwave.

"What's happening?" Sam choked out, his eyes now raised skyward as well.

"Angels," said Dean, his gaze still locked on the indigo heavens. He wondered if one of those beams of light was Castiel, wondered if his friend was even still alive. "They're falling."

It was Sam's silence that finally made Dean tear his eyes away from the sky. Where before the hunter had been shaking and gasping, he was now utterly, terrifyingly still.

"No, Sammy, come on," called Dean as he pressed his fingers to his little brother's neck, nearly crying with relief when he felt the erratic flutter of a pulse.

The older hunter found the strength to haul Sam's body from the ground, laying him in the backseat as gently as possible. He fumbled with the middle seatbelt, looping it around Sam's torso and clicking it into place. It wasn't much, but it was the best that Dean could do. He had the driver's door open and was halfway into his seat, focused solely on getting Sam to the nearest emergency room, when he froze.

Crowley. He could not leave the king of hell tied up alone in a church. His demons would come for him, he would get away, and all of this would have been for nothing. Dean cast a glance at Sam's slack, pale face, punching his seat in fear and frustration before grabbing a set of keys from the trunk and sprinting back into the church.

Crowley had remained silent during the brothers' earlier exchange, perhaps realizing that it was in his best interests to let Dean talk Sam out of completing the trial. When Dean came back alone however, the demon had no such reservations.

"Ah, squirrel," he greeted as Dean scuffed his foot through the devil's trap and bent down to unlock the chains holding him to the chair. "How's it going out there? Not very well, by the sound of it. What was that about the angels falling? Doesn't bode well for your little haloed friend, does it?"

"Shut up, Crowley," growled Dean as he yanked the demon to his feet and pulled him towards the door. He paused, turning back to pick up Sam's gun and the demon knife, both of which had been abandoned in the events of the disastrous third trial. Then he caught sight of the massive crack in the floor and the smashed window that he had been too distracted to notice before. He remembered the bandage around Sam's wrist, the gashes on his face. "What the hell happened here?"

Crowley followed his gaze to the broken window, and sneered.

"Moose took a bit of a tumble," he told Dean. "He really should have known better than to mess with the king of hell."

Dean looked back and forth between the demon and the broken glass. Someone must have come to rescue Crowley, and had apparently thrown Sam out of the window. Whoever it was would pay, if they were still alive. But he could not worry about it at the moment. He dragged Crowley the rest of the way to the car. An infuriating smirk oozed across the demon's face when he caught sight of Sam's prone form in the backseat.

"Ooh, maybe little Cas isn't your biggest concern," he taunted. "It looks like this trial business didn't quite agree with Moose. I suppose you will have to find out whether or not you can fight this big, scary war without him. My guess is not."

Dean's terror and fury exploded out of him in a punch that knocked Crowley to his knees. The hunter pulled a roll of duct tape from the trunk, tearing off a piece and slapping it over the demon's smug mouth.

"I told you to shut up," he growled, grabbing Crowley by the jacket lapels and shoving him unceremoniously into the trunk of the impala. He slammed it shut, locking it carefully before running to the driver's seat and sliding behind the wheel. He paused only to reach back and check his brother's weakening pulse before peeling out of the church lot as fast as his precious car could take them, a fountain of mud and gravel kicked up in their wake.

The only thought that Dean would allow himself to have was about getting his little brother to safety. Because that was a goal, something that he could accomplish. If he let his mind stray, let himself wonder if Sam would still be alive when they got there, let himself wonder about the dark-haired angel who probably also needed his help…

Dean pressed his foot even harder on the gas, wondering why the hell they had picked a church that was so damn far away from an ER. But he knew why. They had wanted someplace isolated from civilians in case something went wrong. Well, something had gone wrong, and now it was not any civilian who was in danger of losing everything.

Dean did not let the speedometer dip below eighty miles per hour, which was perhaps unwise, given the fact that he kept taking his eyes off the road to check on his little brother. Sam remained pale and motionless as if death had already claimed him, but Dean refused to let himself believe that he was gone. He watched the mile markers tick by, sending up prayer after prayer to Cas, hoping that the angel was okay, that he would find them, that he would have a miracle in store for Sam. But there was nothing, not even the hint of a response.

After the longest forty minutes of Dean's life, a sign for a hospital came into view. Horn blaring, the hunter pulled the impala into the bay reserved for ambulances, mentally daring anyone to give him crap for it. With Sam's life on the line, Dean would have blasted the hospital a new door if he thought it would be faster. He dashed around the car to Sam's door, yanking it open and pulling the injured man into his arms again. He could feel the unsteady rise and fall of Sam's chest, telling him that there was still a chance that this could all be okay.

Dean was so focused on his unconscious little brother that he did not notice the team of medical personnel that had approached them.

"Sir, can you tell us what's wrong?"

Dean turned to face the speaker, a middle aged man wearing a lab coat over his scrubs. There were three nurses standing behind him, but Dean focused on the man who was clearly the doctor in charge, the one most able to help Sammy.

"My brother is hurt," he said, refusing the nurses' help to get Sam onto the gurney that they had brought. The doctor frowned at Sam as two of the nurses began to take his vitals and check for any visible injuries, while the third started pushing the gurney into the hospital.

"How was he injured?" the doctor asked. "Were there any blows to the head?"

Dean did not know how to answer the man. Sam had been sick for so long that it was hard to remember everything that was wrong. He started after Sam, unwilling to let his brother out of his sight again. How had he let this happen?

"It's my fault," he whispered. "This was supposed to be on me."

The doctor stopped Dean with a firm hand on his shoulder and forced the hunter to meet his gaze.

"Assigning blame is completely pointless," he said sternly. "I can't help your brother if you don't tell me what happened to him. So help me help him."

Dean took a deep breath and nodded, following Sam's gurney into a curtained-off cubicle in the emergency room.

"Uh, no head injuries, I think," he told the doctor, eyes fixed on his brother's face. "He did fall through a window though. And he's been sick for a few months; fevers, weakness, sleeping all of the time. He's been coughing up a lot of blood, too."

Why hadn't Dean brought Sam to the hospital sooner, or at least made him stop the trials? Listing his brother's symptoms like that made him realize how short-sighted and irresponsible he had been. Even Cas had warned him, told him that the trials were damaging Sam irreparably. But the hunter had wanted hell locked up so badly that he had chosen to ignore it until it was too late.

The doctor was clearly not impressed by Dean's choices either, but he did not comment on them. He merely asked the hunter a few follow-up questions about Sam's illness and medical history, before turning to his patient and beginning his examination. The nurses had already gotten Sam hooked up to a number of monitors, which reassured Dean slightly. His brother's vitals were not good, but they were stable. But then one of the nurses pulled away the bandage that had been wrapped around Sam's forearm, and Dean's vision went red with rage.

Bite marks. Crowley had bitten Sam, hard enough to leave a nasty, oozing wound. It must have hurt like hell. Dean clenched his hands into fists, itching to sink them into the demon's pompous face over and over again until he had knocked out every single one of the teeth that had hurt Sam. But he couldn't, not until he knew Sam would be okay.

When the doctor saw the marks he glanced up curiously at Dean, flinching when he caught sight of the hunter's obvious fury. Dean made an effort to calm himself down, not wanting to scare the man who was supposed to be saving his little brother.

"Sir, maybe you should wait outside," the doctor suggested. When Dean gave him a look that had made demons cower in terror, the man sighed. "Your brother appears to be in a coma. I won't know more until I run some tests, but there is nothing you can do for him right now. Besides, your car is blocking the ambulance bay. Go park it, and I'll have more to tell you by the time you get back."

Dean glowered at the older man. He hated the helpless feeling of trusting his brother's life to a stranger, but unless he figured out a way to get a medical degree in the next ten minutes, he was out of options.

"Help him," he ordered the doctor. He glanced at Sam's blank face one more time, before turning on his heel and striding out of the ER.

When he got to the impala, he checked the lock on the trunk. It was still secure, but Dean had to fight back the urge to pop it open and vent some of his dread and rage on Crowley. He forced himself to keep walking to the driver's seat. Sam needed him, so revenge on Crowley would have to wait.

The hospital was a fairly large one, so the drive to the parking garage took longer than Dean would have liked. He used the time to send up another prayer to Cas, hoping that the angel would get his act together and respond already. Dean had to believe that Castiel was just ignoring him for some reason, perhaps too busy with whatever had caused the angels to rain down like shooting stars. Letting himself consider the alternative, that Cas was not answering because he was not alive, was too much for Dean. The possibility of losing both his brother and his angel was more than he could handle, and he could not afford to fall apart.

Dean finally pulled into the parking garage, taking the turn at the entrance a bit harder than was necessary, and grimly enjoying the sound of Crowley hitting the wall of the trunk. He pulled into a space on one of the less crowded floors of the garage, in case the demon tried anything shifty.

"Get comfy, asshat," Dean said, banging the top of the trunk with his fist as he passed. "You're gonna be in there for a while."

He jogged back into the hospital, heading straight for the ER. When he got to his brother's cubicle, he froze. The bed was empty. Sam was gone. Sam was gone. Sam was gone.

Trying to tamp down the panic that was tightening his chest, Dean sprinted to the desk at the center of the ward.

"The man who was in that bed, Sam Dougherty, where is he?" Dean asked the startled nurse behind the desk as he pointed to the empty cubicle.

"Sir, I don't-"

"Where is my brother?" Dean shouted. He felt slightly guilty when the woman cringed away from him looking scared, but he needed to find Sam.

"Calm down, Mr. Dougherty," said a composed voice from behind Dean. The hunter whirled around, coming face to face with the doctor from earlier.

"Where is Sam?" he asked urgently. "He's not…"

"Your brother is alive," the doctor assured him, and one of the bands around Dean's chest loosened slightly. "We took him back for some tests, and his condition was so poor that we decided to admit him right away. I'll take you to his room."

"You said that you would know more when I got back," said Dean as he followed the doctor up a flight of stairs and along a busy hallway. "Well I'm back, so what do you know?"

The doctor sighed, and Dean's stomach clenched. He knew that look. It was the look of someone who knew that he had no good news to deliver.

"Not as much as we had hoped," the older man admitted. "Your brother's illness is unlike any I've ever encountered before. I ordered several different scans and blood tests, but the results aren't back yet. For now, we just have Sam on fluids until we know more."

"But he's still unconscious?" Dean confirmed.

"I'm afraid so. Your brother is showing all the signs of being in a coma, probably his body's way of doing damage control." The doctor stopped at the door to one of the patient rooms. "Sam is in here. You can stay as long as you want, and I'll come talk to you as soon as I know anything."

"Right. Thanks Doc," said Dean absently as he stared at his brother's door. He was suddenly reluctant to open it, not wanting to see how bad Sam really was. But he was the older brother. It was his job to go in there and sit with Sam, doing whatever he had to in order to get his little brother healthy again. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he pushed the door open.

It was like getting hit by a minivan, and Dean knew what that felt like. Actually it was worse, because this time it was Sammy who was hurt, and Dean was the minivan, and he could not just slap on a couple of band-aids and make it better.

"Oh, Sammy," Dean whispered as he fell into the chair that someone had placed beside his brother's bed. "What did I let happen to you?"

Sam was a fidgeter. He always had to be doing something with his hands, or tapping his feet. Even in his sleep he was never still, always rolling over or rubbing his arm across his face. It used to annoy Dean when they'd had to share a bed as kids, but now he missed it. Sam was always in constant motion. Except for now. Now Sam was completely motionless, his face blank and his skin pale, except for the slashes of purple that marked his injuries. To Dean, that stillness meant death, and he had already seen Sam dead far too many times. He could not bear another.

My fault, my fault, my fault. The words kept chasing themselves around Dean's head, bouncing off the insides of his skull and bringing tears to his eyes. He had failed; failed to undertake the trials himself, and then failed to keep Sam safe through them. And Sam had thought that he had been the one to constantly let his brother down? Dean would have laughed at the irony, had the situation been less dire.

Dean reached out, grasping his brother's hand. It was warmer than he had expected, which he knew was probably a sign of fever, but made it feel like Sam was more alive somehow, more present. Dean leaned back, forcing himself to pull in another breath. He glanced out of the window at the now empty sky, which was beginning to take on the pink tinge of dawn.

What had happened with the angels? Cas had left because he wanted to lock them all away in heaven. Clearly that plan had majorly backfired, but what could have caused him to fail so spectacularly? And what would the world be like now that he had?

Welcoming the chance of a distraction, Dean reached over and grabbed the remote that was resting on Sam's bedside table. He switched the TV on to his favorite national news channel, which was showing footage of angels falling all over the globe. The caption read: Mass international meteor shower confounds experts.

"Seriously?" Dean asked aloud. "Thousands of angels fall out of the sky and they think it's a fucking meteor shower?"

He glanced at Sam for his reaction, before remembering that the younger hunter was down for the count. Dean sighed, running his hands through his hair and pressing his palms to his eyes. He could not do this. He could not carry this world alone.

The hunter leaned towards his brother again, resting his elbows on the bed and his chin on his hands as he stared at Sam. The voices of the reporters washed over him in a senseless wave as he kept his vigil. By the time a new doctor, probably a specialist of some kind, walked into the room, an envelope of scans in his grasp and a grim expression on his face, a steely determination had overtaken Dean.

This would be the last time that he saw Sam hurt like this. He would not fail him again. He would not let him slip away. He would do whatever it took to keep his brother.

A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story. I would really appreciate some feedback, if you have a minute. Thanks again!