Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural and the idea for this story is borrowed from Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I don't own either.
Summary: Nothing is what it seems. When does reality become fantasy? Sam's version of my story "Dean's normal again".
A/N: You don't have to read both since they are not part of the same story just based on the same thing but if you like this one you might want to read that one.
A/N: Thanks to my wonderful beta d767468 without which this would have been as good.
She walked down the familiar white hall keeping in step with the attendant who was showing her the room...well that wasn't exactly right. She already knew the way to his room but she needed the attendant to get in. The hallway itself was unchanged from the last time she had been there and hadn't changed at all in the last 3 years that she had been coming there.
She and the attendant came to a stop at a door, a very familiar door. Even though she supposed that all the doors in the hallway looked exactly the same, she always knew which door was his. The attendant, a big burly man with short light brown that she still felt a little guilty about finding attractive, swiped his card through the card reader that was to the side of the door and the door opened with a slight pop. The attendant ventured into the room, but she stayed on the outside of the door well versed in the procedures of the place. The attendant partially closed the door after him blocking her view, after a few moments the attendant came back out and nodded to her.
"You can see him now." She nodded her thanks and entered the room. Her eyes focused on him. He was dressed in white scrubs and his hair was a little longer than the last time she had seen him, then again it generally was. He refused to let anyone cut his hair and anytime anyone would try he would get agitated and sometimes violent, and so they left it alone. His hair hid his eyes from her but still the moment he had come into view her gut clenched violently at the pain that spread quickly through her. Jessica knelt down so that she was at his eye level and hoped even though she knew better that his eyes would meet hers.
"Sam." She said softly but as always he didn't look at her. "Sam, it's me Jessica." She said and her face crumpled. This was why she hadn't come here in months, it was so hard to see someone that she loved so much not respond to her at all, even though she supposed that she should've have gotten used to it by now. He had been this way for three years…well at least this time around. It had been three years since she found out about Sam's condition but it still felt like yesterday.
Jessica woke to the sound of Sam talking, it sounded like he was talking to someone but a quick look at their alarm clock confirmed what she thought, it was the middle of the night. Who was Sam talking to in the middle of the night? She slipped out the door not sure who she was expecting to see but when she saw no one and Sam was talking to himself it made her puzzled and a little scared. More scared when Sam introduced Jessica to his brother like he was standing right in front of him when in reality Sam was talking to air. She had tried telling Sam that there was no one there and to stop freaking her out, but he just kept on insisting that his brother was there and then he got angry when Jessica kept insisting that he wasn't. Eventually Jessica backed down and pretended that Dean was there just to get Sam to stop yelling at her.
A few minutes later he asked Jessica to excuse them because he and Dean needed to talk. Jessica was happy to oblige and the first thing she had done was to go to Sam's underwear drawer. Sam took pills, she wasn't sure what for, she always assumed that when Sam was comfortable enough he would share. She had seen him in the past open his drawer and take the pills in the morning, but had never actually seen the bottle. She had thought about sneaking a peek a few times when Sam wasn't home but in the end had always decided to wait for Sam to tell her. She changed her mind in that moment and took the pills out of his drawer and saw two things right off. One was the last fill date on the bottle which was more than 2 months ago and the second was the name of the medication, Invega. The name itself meant little to her but the words off to the side did: For help in the treatment of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia. Sam had schizophrenia. She had barely put the bottle back away when Sam came into room looking the same as he always did, but everything seemed so different. Schizophrenia. Sam had schizophrenia. She was so lost in her thoughts she hadn't realized that Sam was telling her that he was going to find his Dad who hadn't contacted his brother in a few days until after he was gone. He had left in the middle of the night with a brother he thought existed to go who knew where and wasn't on his pills. After a long argument with herself Jessica called the number on Sam's pill bottle and told his doctor that Sam hadn't taken his pills in a while. They tracked Sam down and he had been there ever since.
She also remembered her first visit here clearly, sometimes more clearly then she would like.
She had made her way nervously to the front reception desk, then after giving her name was told to sit and wait. She had already had to wait for 2 weeks without hearing anything and she hated to wait any longer but she knew in order to know what was going on with Sam she had to wait. When her name was called she soon found out she was not going to be seeing Sam but Sam's doctor. Sam's doctor had been a young woman with black hair with a few grays mixed in. She told her to sit down which Jessica had done and then Jessica had asked if she could see Sam. Sam's doctor who had called herself Dr. Allred said that she wouldn't be able to that day because she had to understand about Sam before she could see him. Then she had proceeded to tear her world apart.
The doctor then had put down all the pictures of Sam and his family. Jessica had only seen a few before then because most of the time Sam kept them hidden, which she thought was because of the bad way their family had separated. She then asked if Jessica had ever seen or talked to anyone in his family and Jessica had shook her head. The doctor then moved her computer around so that Jessica could see the screen and played a clip from YouTube. The clip was the theme song of an early 90's show, she gasped as both a much younger Dean and a much younger Sam's dad made their appearance. She had thought they had looked familiar before but she had never placed them. The show had only ran for one year because it wasn't terribly popular, which was why she hadn't placed it immediately.
It turned out that Sam did not have a brother, nor had he ever had a brother. In fact the father he was closed lipped about also had never existed. Apparently Sam's real mother and father both had schizophrenia. They had gotten married due to the fact that they both understood it and were more understanding and compassionate than most other people. Sam's real parents had died in a car accident when he was 9 and he had developed a very early onset of schizophrenia. He had been previously hospitalized there from the age of 9 until he was 16.
His doctor explained that he had completely forgotten about his real parents and instead had replaced them with Dean and John Winchester. She also said that the father and brother were protectors and what they were protecting Sam from were monsters, monster that were anywhere and everywhere.
Jessica had then picked one of the pictures and demanded if they weren't' real how was there a picture? Because at that time even though she had seen Sam talk to air, she had assumed that Dean was a real person and that Sam had just been hallucinating he was there. She then pulled up images that had the same smile and showed that Sam had photoshopped pictures of himself and Dean and the man who played Dean's father on TV together at various points in their lives.
There was one more thing her doctor told her and that had been the hardest pill to swallow of all. He sometimes incorporated people, either patients or hospital workers into his fantasy and when they didn't fit with his delusion anymore he tended to eliminate them. The doctor had explained that in Sam's world she had died on the same day he had been taken into the hospital. They told her that he refused to eat anything or sleep because he was grieving for her. Which really didn't make anything better, even though she knew that he had to love her to have such an extreme response to her supposed death.
It was partly the reason she had stayed with him for so long, she loved him and knew that Sam had loved her. Sam had been there for three years. The first half a year he had been here Jessica had visited him all the time. As had his other close friends but there was only so much blank staring that most of them could take before they stopped visiting. Jessica hung on the longest, partially because she knew that he had no family and if she didn't visit him that no one else would. But every time she came it was terribly painful, she kept expecting to see the man she had thought she was going to marry stare right through her. It was the most painful thing in the world, she had stopped coming as often when she had started drinking every time after coming here to dull the pain.
Especially after overhearing once one of the workers in the hospital talk about Sam. Sam was very vocal most of the time about what he experienced. He spoke aloud so it was very easy to tell what kind of world he thought he was living in. Some of the workers thought of Sam's life like it was television drama, and sometimes she would hear recounts of monsters Sam thought he had hunted. Or people he thought he had saved or fights he had had with his brother that didn't exist. It had always bugged her a little the way they talked about Sam like his life was so entertaining when they should know better, but she hadn't said anything. Not until one of the workers was boasting about how Sam had finally kissed a girl. It was part protectiveness of Sam and part jealously that had her yelling at the worker and telling him in no uncertain terms that if she ever heard him talk about Sam's life like that again she would kick his ass. A few of the workers called her names not so behind her back after the incident but she didn't care. She was protective of him and hadn't liked hearing about him kissing another girl, even though she knew that Sam thought she was dead.
That night she drunk so much that she blacked out. She and her close friends decided after that night that taking a step back from Sam might be a good thing and to concentrate on her own life for a bit. She had started to see him less and less and had gotten on with her life more and more. She had graduated from college-not Stanford the school Sam thought they went to, but a local college- although sometimes she had in the earlier days wondered if Sam put them in Stanford together because he knew that she wanted to live in California so much. She had started a new job but still she wasn't able to date because she kept comparing every man she dated to Sam. It wasn't fair to them or herself and she wished for so long that she could get over him. Not long ago she realized there was only one way.
"Sam please look at me." she pleaded, because this could possibly be the last time she was going to be doing this. She was moving, she had the moving van ready to go, she had to come here though to give Sam one more chance even though she didn't think it would make any difference. "Sam please..." he still stared past her with his same vacant stare. She put her hands on his face hoping to get a response but to no avail.
"Sam, Sam, Sam. Sam." she said several times hoping to grab his attention, when it didn't work she sighed and took her hands off his face. "Sam I know you don't like ultimatums but if you don't' talk to me I'm leaving. I'm moving to Maryland... I got a job there" she stared at him for a long moment hoping for anything, a twitch, a wiggle, anything that would tell her the love of her life was there but he stayed still. "Sam please talk to me..." she pleaded again this time her vision of Sam was obscured by the fact that fat tears were rolling down her cheeks. Sam remained the same. "Sam." she said and she closed her eyes as she felt more tears rolling down her cheeks.
She knew what she had to do, the love of her life was gone and all that was left was his shell. She had to be strong, she had do what was best for her even though a bit part of her wanted to wrap herself around Sam and never leave. Sam was gone and she had to live her life. Jessica nodded still crying, she made her way up to feet and looked down at the tall man.
"Dean take care of him." She whispered, she knew that Dean wasn't real and that the world Sam lived in wasn't real. However she also knew that if anyone could reach him, protect him and make him happy it wasn't her, it was Dean. She leaned down and kissed Sam forehead and walked out of the room, from her old life, her old love and into her new one whatever that would be.
~.~
"Sam, Sam, Sam" he felt the word echo in his head. There was something familiar about it, something dancing at the edge of his mind if he could just reach it then it would- "Sam!" Sam jumped and saw Dean staring at him, his eyebrows raised expectantly and with some annoyance. Sam was right next to the door with his hand on the knob, he must have spaced out or something. He shook his head as he stepped out the door, his duffel in hand, he closed the door, and joined his brother in the Impala.
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