Come Hell or High Water
Three days.
It's raining outside, loud and pounding, the sky trying to hurl itself to the ground. Drops slide down the windshield, managing only half the distance before they're swept away by the squeaking wipers. Every time the window clears, Sam glances up at the sky, as if its load of dark clouds will have lightened since the last time he checked.
Three days, nine hours.
They're parked under a streetlight, glimmering and orange. Outside, water is pooling in the zigzagging scars of the asphalt. The street and sidewalks glisten. Sam can make out his own rippling reflection in the slick layer of water on the cement.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes.
Next to him, Dean is fidgeting, one knee bobbing up and down, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. The streetlamp above them, their only light, flickers for a moment. Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out in a whoosh, sits back, puts his hands on his lap and stares out his window as the car rumbles quietly around them. The heater is on, but it really isn't making any difference.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes and… fifteen seconds.
Not that Sam's counting. Because, why would he be counting how long it's been since he and Dean have stayed in a motel and gotten a good night's sleep, warm in beds, under sheets, after showers? Who counts stupid things like that?
Not that Dean bothers sleeping any more at all.
Dean clears his throat, and Sam immediately turns his face away, looks outside his window. There's a brief flash of lightning, and in the sudden illumination, Sam catches the sight of a few trees in the distance, swaying ominously.
The crack of thunder that follows echoes in Sam's head even after it recedes, grumbling indignantly, into the night. Dean chooses that moment to say, "Sam."
Sam tries to ignore him, stares out the window like the meaning of life lies somewhere just beyond the glass. But Dean knows how to be annoying and irritating.
He repeats Sam's name, waits a moment and then swats Sam's leg with the back of his hand. Sam can see Dean gazing at him out of the corner of his eye. Not this time, Sam thinks. He won't give in. God knows they need to sleep, God knows Dean needs to sleep.
Now, if God would only do something about it, all would be right in the world.
Of course, Sam knows better than most how much God does.
Dean sighs, finally, says, "Come on, Sammy," and turns away, glances out of his own window.
Sam's resolve shatters and he faces Dean. "You can't be considering this."
Dean seems slightly more chipper, suddenly, but these days Dean looking "chipper" just means that he's looking a little less frail and bag-eyed, a little less like soaked tissue paper.
"Gotta get rid of the kelpie," he says to Sam. "Now's as good a time as any."
Sam stares at him incredulously. "Now? Now, when it sounds like it's raining demonic pit bulls?"
Dean looks disgruntled and more than a little weary, like he just wants to go out and do the job and stop arguing about it. "If we don't do it now, someone else dies—"
"No, Dean. No one else will die, not tonight, because no one is going to be near a culvert when there are flash flood warnings blaring over the radio. Not to mention the fact that sane people cover culverts when it's raining, to stop psychos fromgoing in there."
Dean gazes at Sam for a long moment and then says, with a slight grin, "You calling me psycho?"
Sam can't take the jokes. This is suicidal, even for Dean, and damn, does it worry him. He lifts a hand, attempts to squeeze the bridge of his nose into nothingness. "Let's go find a motel. Please."
In some other universe, Dean might have agreed. In this one, he just shakes his head, grips the steering wheel again. Sam sees his knuckles go white.
He doesn't know what Dean's thinking. This saving people thing, this hero complex, isn't new, but it's grown to disturbing levels. Sam doesn't know where it'll end, or with what, and at this point, he's not sure what Dean's intentions actually are: save as many innocents as he can, or get himself killed in the process. After the hunt in Nebraska, with the Carters, Sam's seriously leaning towards the latter.
"You know what?" Dean says suddenly. "Screw you." He reaches into the backseat, drags the duffle bag forwards, unzips it and digs around in it for a gun and the silver bullets. "I'll do this myself."
He shoves open the door, and the sound of the rain is suddenly magnified, a harsh tumult that feels like it's coming from inside Sam's head.
"Dean," says Sam bemusedly, reaching out and grabbing Dean's leg before he can get out.
"What, Sam? What? You want me to go find a motel? Get a good night's sleep? Because that's been happening a lot lately, right?"
"You can't do this alone. You need cover," replies Sam, trying to be the voice of reason, trying to remain calm.
"Yeah, I do need cover. So are you going to move your ass?" asks Dean, looking slightly furious. He's half out of the car already, arm and leg getting drenched.
Sam sighs, looks out the window again and shakes his head. He can feel his face tightening, knows his lips are pressed together so hard their probably going to fuse together.
"The culvert will be closed," he says eventually. "If there was any point of going out now, I'd go with you. But all that's going to happen out there is that we're going to get pneumonia."
There's another flash of lightning and Dean pulls his soaking leg back into the car, tugs the door closed. It creaks comfortingly.
"Okay," he says, dragging a hand across his face. "Okay. How about this – I'll go check. If the culvert is open, I'll come back and get you and we'll go in together. If it isn't, we'll go find a room and turn in for the night."
It's not all right. It's not all right at all. But it's better than Dean going off on his own, and Sam has no doubts that he will if forced to.
Sam's starting to get a shooting pain in his head. How did they come to this? Dean gets crazy, sometimes, sure.
But not like this.
"Sam?"
"Okay," mutters Sam resignedly. "Okay."
"Good," says Dean. He opens the door again, stuffs the gun into his waistband, and gets out of the car.
"Come back to get me," calls Sam, but he thinks his voice sinks under the slamming of the car door.
A few feet, and Dean's stepped out of the orange halo of the streetlamp above them and into the blindingly dark night.
**
The rain sounds louder now that he's alone, and Sam's headache has morphed into a full-on migraine. He leans forward and turns the heater's dial up, puts his hand near the vent. He can't understand why the damn thing doesn't work.
It's like everything that defines Dean, makes him who he is, break when he does.
Everything.
Sam rubs his face, one hand cold, and the other warm. He presses his fingers into his eyes, thumbs into his temples, as if, somehow, the pain has a threshold over which it can't pass and once it gets there, Sam will stop feeling it.
He can't think straight with headaches. It all seems too bright, too sharp. And he needs to be able to think straight now because Dean can't, because he's spiraling in guilt and self-loathing and he won't.
Sam reaches down for the duffle bag that's sitting near the pedals, where Dean left it, rummages through it for his gun, and checks the magazine like Dean did. The way his luck's been going lately, the culvert will be open.
Only Dean could find a kelpie-haunted culvert. Only Dean would be stupid enough to go after it when it looks like a flash flood outside, when it's raining bucket after divine bucket, when he knows kelpies are spirits that drown their victims.
He's got to stop thinking about this, but everything else there is to think about is ten times worse.
There's a sudden flash of lightning so intense that it fills the car with unearthly white light. It steals Sam's breath away, transports him to a day he never wants to remember, and his arm shoots out, grabs a hold of the armrest attached to the door. It takes only a second to vanish, but it's long enough, and Sam doesn't recover until the thunder has long since subsided. His heart races and he takes a deep breath, berating himself for losing control.
He really needs to sleep.
He really needs Dean to come back.
He pulls out his cell, peers at the time. It's only been three minutes. They're parked as close to the culvert as they can get by car, but the trek took them at least five minutes this morning. And it hadn't been raining then.
The car makes an odd sound, and in the time it takes Sam to look over at the steering wheel and dashboard, it's shuddered to a stop. The hot air abruptly vanishes and the windshield wipers squeak themselves into their default position. The windshield suddenly looks like it's made of frosted glass.
"Come on," mutters Sam, scooting over into the driver's seat. He turns the key back to off, and then tries to start the car up again. It screeches loudly, rattles and fails again. Sam doesn't remember ever hearing it sound like that before. He tries again, and then a third time, before sitting back and pounding the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
Everything breaks with Dean; and Sam can't ever fix any of it.
He leans forward, rests his forehead on the steering wheel. It's freezing, but seems to soothe his aching head.
It shouldn't, not really. He can't remember how many times he'd slept like this, or just sat like this, in between the time that Dean had died and Ruby had…
Sam squeezes his eyes shut tightly, wonders why he can't stop thinking about this, when it's the last thing he wants swimming around in his head.
And with that thought, Dean's voice starts up inside his head. Like always, it's not the words that hurt Sam so much as the sound.
Because it's not like Sam hadn't known already.
He just hadn't believed it.
He expected demons to lie, expected them to say things that would throw their captors off. At first, they'd just gone on and on about what would your brother think of you now, Sammy? and what a disappointment and send me back – Dean's screams are soul music. But near the end of the third month, when Sam had just started getting a handle on his powers, when he'd stopped needing Ruby's intervention every now and then, the demons has started employing new tactics.
Or so he'd thought.
They'd be tied to chairs and bound by devil's traps and Sam would be mustering that feeling, that rawness that pulled everything together, a tingling in his heart and his arm and his mind. The demon would be spitting its essence, trying to swallow it back against all force, and just before Sam got it, just before he managed to find that niche in his powers, the demon would start shouting and screaming and jeering. Your brother's pretty good at the Hell rumba, Sammy. 'Course, you Winchesters, you monsters would be. The things he thinks up – I wonder if he sits in his little corner of the cesspit and plans every cut he's going to make, every organ he's going to pull, every scream he's going to wrench from some poor soul.
And that was always when Sam would lose it, and Ruby would have to pull out her knife.
She reprimanded him for allowing their words to get to him. Demons lie, she said, you should know. Sam always wondered if she knew how ironic her words were, and if it should worry him.
But half a month of it, and Sam adjusted.
He hadn't truly believed their words then. He knew where Dean was, sure. Knew that Hell meant torture. Though he couldn't imagine what they were doing to him down there, his mind was pretty good at inserting gruesome scenarios into his nightmares. Sam hadn't woken shouting like that since the visions.
But the possibility that Dean was torturing souls? It had never even crossed his mind.
It made Sam sick, thinking about it. Not because Dean had started doling it out, but because Sam hadn't believed it to be true. Because he hadn't thought, then, well, if he is, I don't give a fuck; he had thought, not Dean, never Dean.
It felt like Dean would be able to see right through him and realize that Sam had known and that he hadn't believed and Dean would feel like he'd let his family down even more.
But Dean hasn't, as far as he can tell. Dean's too broken to see anything clearly.
If he doesn't bounce back…
Sam knows he only has himself to blame, though he'd like to blame everyone else: the angels, Lilith...
He could have saved Dean.
He should have.
A part of him feels like he should be raging after Dean's confession, going after anything and everything, the way he was when Dean was gone. He is seething, somewhere, and it's bound to come up for air sooner or later, but right now, there are more important things to think about.
Like Dean and where his head is and what it'll take him to go back normal.
Or what passes for "normal" these days, which is even more abnormal for them than it usually is.
**
Sam's dawdling in his thoughts, drifting further and further towards sleep, when someone starts hammering on the window. He jerks up, grabs blindly for a gun, head snapping towards the window so fast that he cricks his neck.
There's a boy at the window. Not Dean, just a little boy, hair plastered to his head, eyes so wide they take up half his face.
"Help!" He's shouting, screaming, hysterical. "You have to help!"
"Okay!" says Sam. "Okay."
He opens the door, says, "Christo," and it's a mark of how out of it this kid is that he doesn't even bothering questioning that statement. But he doesn't flinch either, so Sam's pretty sure he's safe. He keeps his hand on his gun anyway.
"The – the – the man!" shouts the kid, grabbing Sam's jacket with a wet hand and pointing behind him. "H-h-he needs – he needs—" The kid is shivering and shaking and he can't string two words together without sucking in a heaving breath.
Sam reaches for him, says, "Hey, hey – you need to calm down." The boy nods, tries to breathe. Sam didn't notice it before, what with all the rain, but tears are streaming down his face.
"What's your name?" he asks.
"Michael."
"Okay, Michael. Deep breaths."
He nods, takes in air through his nose, mimicking Sam.
"Okay. Tell me what happened," Sam says.
"The man," begins Michael, talking so fast he keeps eating his words. "I was – I was playing and I saw a light, and then there was a horse or – then a-a man came, and he opened – and I followed him and he's stuck! He told me t-to c-come here, and l-look for a b-black car!"
Sam just stares at the kid. "What?"
"There was a man," Michael repeats, swallowing hard, chest still heaving. "He s-saved me, but the – the water came and he f-fell and got stuck, and he dropped his phone! He told m-me to tell you! You have to go help him!"
He went after it himself. He went after it himself.
Sam's forgotten how to breathe.
**
Sam gets out of the car, yanks open the door to the back, and herds the boy in before going around to the trunk and pulling out their other duffle bag, the one they use for clothes. He ducks into the backseat, where the kid is shivering and staring at him with wide eyes, wrenches the bag's zipper open.
He throws a shirt and a pair of pants at Michael, tells him to get out of his wet things and dry his hair with something, and then gets into the front seat, abuses the car until it starts. He turns the heater all the way up and hands Michael his cell phone, tells him to call 911 if he's not back in fifteen minutes.
The boy nods and then bursts into tears.
Sam has no choice but to leave him like that.
**
He takes it back. It's not raining pit bulls; it's raining hellhounds.
There aren't enough streetlights in this part of town, and the ones that they do have are set too far apart. The deluge is making it even harder to see in the dark, and when Sam gets to the other end of the mostly-flooded street, the curb almost trips him.
He can't believe Dean went and tried to take the thing by his fucking self.
The culvert is in a large, fenced-in park, near the back where there are no swings and slides, and no sand to play in. This end of it is small, a little hard to get into, but not impossible. The other end is larger, set at the bottom of a mini-valley, and though it's only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, it takes fifteen minutes to get there by car. It's also harder to get down to that one, which is why probably why the kelpie stays near this one. People are more likely to walk into the end that's easy to get to.
So far, it's managed to drown two men who had followed it. The kelpie is a shape shifter, and one of its pet forms, a woman, is used especially for seduction. The city doesn't know that the men had drowned though, because the kelpie doesn't leave traces. Its victims are its prey.
All the city is sure about is that two men have gone missing in the park. They've launched an investigation and have taken to closing the culvert whenever possible, just in case. The kelpie, though, isn't easily subdued. Removing a grating isn't all that difficult for it.
Sam runs through the park, over grass and then sand and then more grass. It's freezing and he's already soaked through and there are large pools of water wherever the ground depresses. The slide is acting like a waterfall.
Lightning is flashing at regular intervals and if there weren't so many trees and metal things around, Sam would be worried about getting hit. The sounds of thunder are deafening.
The path to the culvert is slightly downhill and water is literally streaming down it. Sam stumbles twice, wipes water out of his eyes, pushes his hair back and then catches sight of the culvert's opening. Water is rushing into it. The grating is lying slightly to the left, and it wasn't like that earlier in the day. Sam feels his heart clench.
The thought that Dean stood there and removed it himself is unfathomable.
The water probably just carried it there.
Sam splashes through the rising water and ducks into the culvert. Inside, the storm is muffled, but it sounds like he's standing near rapids. It's as dark inside as it was outside, and Sam kicks himself for not bringing a flashlight.
"Dean?" Sam calls. His voice echoes away, but he doubts Dean can hear him. He can hardly hear himself. He drags his legs forward. The water is like ice, and it's already risen to a couple of inches below his knees.
"Dean?" he shouts again, as he half walks, half runs. He pulls his gun out; he can't remember Michael telling him if Dean had killed the kelpie.
"Dean!" He's about twenty feet into the culvert now. Dean should be able to hear him; he can't have got farther than this. There's a grill dividing the cement tunnel in half and Sam's pretty sure he's near it.
Just then, he hears Dean's voice. "Over here, Lassie!"
Sam picks up speed, splashing like anything. It's only luck that keeps him from falling and cracking his head, and Sam's not questioning it. Luck owes him, anyway.
Dean comes into view a second later.
He's sitting down, right near that dividing grate, the water slowly rising to chest level. He looks up at Sam, gives a half-cocky grin.
"Knew you'd find me," he says. "Kid g-get back in one piece?" His teeth are chattering, and though he's unabashedly trying to hide the fact, Sam can see the tremor of his lips.
And that dormant rage Sam was been thinking about earlier? Suddenly rears its ugly head.
It's a mark of how much he's been internalizing over the past seven or eight months that he doesn't deck Dean there and then for doing this to himself.
"What happened?" he says as he makes his way towards Dean, because he doesn't know what else to say, except you asshole.
"Found the kid in here – the k-kelpie was closing in," Dean says, and it's unusual. Sam was expecting him to say long story or just get me out of here, I'll tell you later. Something in his face must have changed Dean's mind. "It hit me j-just before I shot it, and I couldn't grab a hold of anything."
The current isn't really more powerful here; Sam can feel it tugging at him, but it's not enough to drag him away. He realizes that something is blocking the flow of water to the other end of the culvert – that's why Dean is chest-deep here. When there wasn't any obstruction, the current would have been stronger.
Sam reaches out, tries to find purchase on the curving walls as he walks, until the divider is within reach.
He grabs on to its thick metal rods, looks down at his brother and says, "How are you stuck?" He prides himself on not adding you fucking moron to the end of that sentence.
"M-my leg. It w-went through the grill… the current was stronger before." mutters Dean. For the first time, Sam hears the slight slur in his voice, and tries to do the math. How long has Dean been sitting in frigid water? His headache returns as soon as he tries to pull up some numbers, so he gives up.
"I think it's broken," Dean adds. He's doing a good job of not stuttering too much.
"Okay," says Sam, trying to hide the strain in his voice. He pushes his gun into his waistband, squats carefully and reaches into the water, groping for Dean's leg. Dean sets his hand on Sam's shoulder to anchor him, though Sam's not sure what help Dean'll be if he slips. His hand is heavy on Sam's shoulder as it is.
"Which leg?" Sam asks.
"Right."
Sam finds Dean's thigh in the murky water, runs his hand very slowly down it to his knee. A couple of inches below Dean's knee, Sam fingers graze over something that feels sharp and splintery. His toes bunch together in his shoes and he almost loses his dinner right there.
Swallowing hard, he says, "Yeah, it's a bad break."
He realizes Dean is mumbling expletives under his breath and squeezing Sam's shoulder. Doesn't say sorry, because really? This is all Dean's fault in the first place.
He pulls a hand out of the water, drags it over his face and crouches there, trying to think. He doesn't know what to do that won't cause Dean more pain. Now that he looks, really looks, he can see the grill is pretty well obstructed. Tree branches and old Chinese take-out boxes, and ripped up pieces of cardboard and who knows what else, all jammed into the little squares of the lattice. No wonder the water isn't getting through.
He turns a little and catches Dean watching him.
"Was this the fucking plan?" he snaps, louder than he'd intended.
Dean's hand slips off of Sam's shoulder. He doesn't look apologetic. If anything, his face takes on a glacial appearance. "What, you wanted me to leave the—"
"Was he even in the culvert before you got there?" asks Sam suddenly.
Dean falls into stony silence.
"You took the grating off yourself, didn't you?"
"L-look, Sam—"
But Sam just shakes his head and mutters, "Forget it. I'm assuming you want to get out of here?"
Dean doesn't reply, and Sam doesn't wait. He reaches into the water again and carefully grabs hold of Dean's leg, one hand on his knee, the other just below the break and tries to pull as hard as he can without causing excess pain.
Dean lets out a groan and snarls an opprobrious remark on Sam's parentage. His leg, on the other hand, doesn't even budge.
The water is steadily rising and Dean's shivering even more; Sam's starting to feel the chills himself. He pulls his hands out of the water and grabs the metals rods again. They're all vertical, and if he can pull them apart, Dean might be able to pull his leg out. Sam yanks with all his strength, feels his muscles straining, but the rods don't give way.
"Okay," he says, breathlessly. "Okay, I'm going to go and get some – Dean!"
Dean's eyes are at half-mast, his head resting against the culvert wall. He's still shivering, but calling that a good sign would be ironic. Sam clutches Dean's jacket, shakes him hard.
"Wake up, Dean! Hey!"
"I am awake, stupid," murmurs Dean. And he is awake, to some extent. Just not awake enough.
Sam cups a handful of water into his palm and splashes Dean's face with it. Dean flinches, blinks and says, "What the fuck, Sam?"
"Stay awake!" says Sam harshly. "Do you understand me? Stay awake, goddammit!"
"O-okay, okay. I'm awake," says Dean, a little more alert. He squints at Sam, like he's having trouble bring him into focus. "J-just g-getting bored waiting for you t-to get a move on."
"Yeah," says Sam, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to think above the sounds of water lapping off the culvert walls, above the headache that's causing his temples to throb in time with his pulse.
He has to go back to the car, get some rope or… something that'll help him get Dean out of here. But how is he supposed to leave if Dean might fall asleep, really fall asleep, while he's gone?
The best way to stay awake is to keep talking.
Sam opens his eyes. "You dropped your phone?"
"N-no, I-I just thought it'd be more exciting to send a k-kid to get you rather - rather than just call you up," says Dean sarcastically. "L-like the movies."
He falls silent, almost breathless, and Sam gazes at him, taking in his paleness and the goose bumps on his neck.
"Okay," Sam says firmly. "Sing something."
Dean stares at Sam. "You – you been in the water t-too long?"
"Would you just start singing?"
Dean tries to roll his eyes. "I-I'm fine, Sam. Feeling warmer already, I s-swear."
"No, Dean, you're not fine. And I need to leave and you need to stay the fuck awake, and this is the only thing I can think of. So start singing."
He glares at Dean until Dean starts mumbling something that sounds like the lyrics of Whole Lotta Love under his breath.
Sam stands up, water cascading off of him, and says, "Louder. I wanna be able to hear you at the end of the culvert."
Dean swallows, nods a little and increases his volume as much as he possibly can. He's stuttering and quivering and he has to keep stopping for breath, but it's good. It's good.
"I'll be right back. Don't stop singing," says Sam, and he turns around, starts hurrying back the way he came, Dean's weak voice pushing him on.
Outside, it's raining harder, if anything. As there's nowhere for the water to go, what with the blockage in the tunnel, the park is slowly being submerged.
Sam gets back to the Impala in record time, sloshing through as fast as he can, not following any particular route, jumping the fence that encloses the park when he gets to it and almost rendering himself sterile in the process.
He thanks the powers that be that Dean had the sense to park under a streetlight, because Sam would have missed the car entirely otherwise. Though, perhaps it isn't an entirely good thing, as Dean apparently used all of the sense he possessed in that decision.
He's pretty sure that it's been more than fifteen minutes since he left Michael in the car, but there are no police cars around. When he unlocks the cars, he realizes why. Michael's drifted off to sleep, looking miniscule in Dean's shirt and pants, but also dry and less pale.
Sam leans into the back and gently checks the boy's pulse. It's stable, which is great. One less thing for Sam to worry about. He extricates his phone out of the kid's lax fingers and sets it in the glove compartment. Hopefully if he can't find the phone, he won't call the cops, which is better than Sam waking him to give him instructions.
Sam rummages around in the arsenal duffle bag, looking for something that'll help Dean. He spots the flashlights, grabs one of them, but leaves the guns. He doesn't seriously think shooting at the metal rods is going to do anything except kill one or both of them, or he would have tried it back in the culvert. But he has no ideas, no clue where to start, or what to do. He should have asked Dean, Dean would have known. He likes all this mechanic tool-y stuff, knows about it.
His neurons start sparking at the thought, and he gets out of the warm, warm car again, goes around to the trunk and drags Dean's toolbox forward. Hammer, screwdrivers, monkey wrench, simple wrench, pliers, crowbar, a handful of lock picks strewn helter-skelter through the box, old plastic peanut butter jars now filled with screws, nails, washers, nuts and bolts, Dean's new drill (he wouldn't leave Home Depot without it) and box of drill bits that Sam had to pay for (also Home Depot, and Dean still owes him).
But nothing to help Dean. Sam rubs at his face, feels water dripping through his soaked clothes onto his back and pulls a cardboard box towards him. It's where Dean keeps his bigger tools, the ones that won't fit anywhere else, or the tools that are broken but he just won't throw away. More often than not, the latter comprise of tools that were handed down to him by John.
There's also a lot of Sam's junk in there, Sam realizes, as he opens up the lid, things he's forgotten about. An old, shabby yellow toolkit, the plastic kind kids who worship their brothers get for their birthdays and a book called Hammering for Morons that Dean bought after Sam managed to pulverize his thumb working for the neighbors over summer vacation ten or eleven years ago.
Under those, are a couple of ropes, a bigger crowbar, a handful of crucifixes that Sam had been looking for last week, three issues of the only magazine Dean buys religiously and two different types of jacks.
Sam grabs the car jacks. One's huge, a bottle jack for heavy metal work, when Dean wants to get under the car and really be able to see, but the other is smaller, a tire jack, and Sam grabs the handle and cranks it, watching a thick bar of metal extend. It looks right. It looks like it could, if forced, widen the culvert bars.
Sam slams the trunk shut, goes around to the front again, checks on Michael (still asleep) and locks the doors, before racing away.
He doesn't notice the rain as he runs. Doesn't notice the bursts of incandescent lightning, the raging thunder. Doesn't notice that the park is now a fucking lake and that it takes him five more minutes getting back to the culvert than it did getting away from it. All he can think about is the mind-numbing cold, and how they need better jackets and as soon as this is over, he's dragging Dean off to JCPenny to buy something worth their money.
His fingers are stiff, wrapped around flashlight and tire jack, his hair is plastered so firmly to his head he's sure he looks bald. His ribs shudder inside his chest, his jaw aches from keeping it clenched so that his teeth don't chatter.
So, yeah, he notices the cold.
He also notices that the culvert is closed.
Someone closed the culvert.
Sam stands there, knee-deep in water that is officially not going anywhere but up, and feels the earth fall away from under his feet. He walks up to the grating that is covering the entrance hole of the culvert slowly, disbelieving. Tugging at it a little, he expects it to fall obediently to his feet. His fingers skate over a thick lock that someone's attached, realizes it hadn't been there before and that someone must have brought it along in the last ten minutes, realizes that the grating had only been screwed on before, and someone must have seen that it had come off (been taken off) and decided to add the lock as a precaution.
He stands there and stares and doesn't know what to do because Dean is in there and that's where Sam has to be too, because these days it gets pretty fucking scary when they're both not in the same place together.
He swallows and curls his fingers around the white, metal grating and leans close and tries to listen as hard as he can, tries to hear Dean's voice. He doesn't want to, doesn't want to know that Dean's stopped singing and—
He wouldn't be able to hear him anyway, not from here. The storm's too loud. The rain and the thunder and the rushing water—
He needs to get to the other end of the culvert.
**
He drives to the other end, because there's no way he'd get there in one piece running. He stumbles three times on the way back to the car alone, though he musters enough sense not to reenact his infertility bid and goes around the fence instead of over it.
The drive through inundated streets takes a full fifteen minutes. He parks as close to the manmade basin in which the larger end of the culvert is embedded as he can. When he gets out of the car and looks back at the street, nothing seems even vaguely familiar. He can't remember the drive.
Sam makes sure he has his gun, flashlight and jack and then wades over to the embankment. The "valley" isn't very deep; probably only five or six feet. The opening of the culvert is entrenched in one of the earthy walls. Water has risen here, too; about four feet.
It's a goddamn swimming pool.
Sam takes his light and the jack in one hand, uses the other to carefully maneuver himself down the slope. There's a brief moment of hesitation before he lowers himself into the water – in retrospect, he probably should have just plunged. It's like ice and knocks Sam's breath away, goes right to his head, his muscles.
The opening is a little higher than the water level, and Sam has to toss his tools up before hefting himself into the culvert. It's harder than it would usually be; his arms don't seem to want to support his weight properly.
He switches the flashlight on when he's up. There's less water at this end, which means that debris is still blocking the dividing grill. But it's easier to run without the hindrance, and Sam does run, runs as fast as his legs will allow, ducking to avoid decapitating himself. He almost pauses at the one turn the culvert takes, knowing he's going to see Dean somewhere up ahead, terrified of what he's going to find, afraid that Dean will have givenup.
But he goes around the bend, and the first thing his senses catch is the sound of the chorus of Whole Lotta Love, sung albeit weakly and in stutter, but it's there and that's all that matters because Dean's alive.
He hurries forward now, strengthened by the voice, and a few seconds later, Dean comes into sight. As soon as he spots Sam, he stops singing and lets out an odd, strangled laugh. It's borne of relief and it, coupled with the look on Dean's face and his sickly pallor, makes Sam's chest ache more than the cold ever could.
"Someone closed the other end," Sam chokes out, falling to his knees at the grill. He stuffs the light under his arm, lifts up the jack.
"I – I f-figured," mumbles Dean, after a brief pause. "Tha's why – kept s-singing."
Sam doesn't quite believe him.
"At – at least we go' rid of the k-kelpie," says Dean with a breathless laugh. "Not gonna be d-dinner t-tonight."
If Sam wasn't trying to position the jack in between the grill's rods, he might have reached out and decked his brother. As it is, his anger has abated into panic and all he can focus on is how long the pause is in between each word Dean spits out and how the jack just refuses to stay in one position, keeps slipping on the wet rods.
Sam's shaky grip isn't helping either.
He tries to do the math in his head again. Dean's been in the water now for approximately forty minutes on an optimist's scale. He started shivering at around twenty minutes and now he can't string two words together properly. Sam squints at Dean in the flashlight's beam; his shivering seems to have grown less pronounced, though his teeth are still chattering.
Without warning, Dean's chin falls. The water is at neck level, and his mouth and nose go under easily.
Sam drops the jack, pulse spiking, reaches through the bars and splashes water on Dean's face. "Whoa, Dean, no – wake up. Wake up!"
"I – I'm—" Dean struggles to pull his head up.
"Talk to me – come on, man, talk," insists Sam, as forcefully as he can, picking the jack back up and pushing it through the bars. He gets it on the first try, this time around, grabs the handle and cranks before the tool can slip.
"I ca – I ca—," breathes Dean. His lips are blue. They're stark against his white face.
"Yes, you can," says Sam, and his heart picks up speed. "You fucking can. Say something – Dean!" He lets go of the jack again, as Dean's eyes start to slip closed, but this time it stays jammed in between the bars. Sam reaches through, grabs Dean's face, slaps him. There's not enough room though, and he can't muster the momentum to deal Dean a proper blow, one that'll have a decent effect. He slaps Dean again, snarls, "Stay awake! Talk, Dean! Talk!"
'What 'm I s-s—"
Sam leans on the jack, pushes with all his strength. It hardly budges. "Talk about—" He searches for a topic that'll keep Dean alert. "Tell me about Hell. Tell me what happened."
Just the thought seems to jerk Dean awake. He stares at Sam through the bars, and Sam sees more life in his eyes than there was five seconds ago.
"C'mon," he groans out as he braces himself against the culvert's wall, pushes again. "Tell – me – about – Hell."
"Wha—" says Dean, trying to keep his chin above water, eyes never leaving Sam.
"Anything," Sam grates out. "Anything – at – all." There's a sound, like the grill is about to give way, and Sam pulls his hands off the jack, stares at it. Nothing moves, but he guesses that he's made a little room. He reaches into the water, grasps one of the tree branches blocking the flow and tugs at it.
It budges.
"Dean, hey," says Sam.
Keep him talking, keep him talking.
"Was there anyone special?" he says, yanking at the tree branch.
"Special?"
"Someone you tor – hurt?" Sam hates himself for stumbling over the word, knows Dean'll catch it even in the state he is. "Someone you knew?"
"No," says Dean, quietly. His face has taken on that expression of self-loathing that Sam has been seeing so often of late.
"B-bu' it d-doesn't m-matter," he forges on. "T-they c-c-could'a pu' anyone in f-front o' me and I w-would ha' gone after t-them too. Any – anyone."
The tree branch comes out suddenly and the force of the water that gushes out propels Sam backwards and onto his rear. Dean mumbles something and winces, and Sam guesses he must have jostled his leg, but it's only a guess because the reaction is a bit toned down.
"Can you feel your legs?" Sam asks suddenly.
There's a long pause, and for a brief moment, the possibility that Dean's died with his eyes open actually enters Sam's mind, because that's how it happened last time, and this Dean looks a lot like that Dean did – pale, lifeless.
But Dean's shifts very slightly, then and says, "I dunno – m-maybe."
And maybe's not good enough because maybe essentially means no, and Dean's really been in the water too long. Sam tries to remember the symptoms of hypothermia, tries to list them in his head and check off which one's Dean is exhibiting, but he can't recall them. He snarls expletives at himself, as if a mental checklist is the key to saving Dean's life, rummages in the water for more debris, yanks them out as quickly as he can.
Water is spurting forcefully through the gaps now.
After a few seconds, he feels Dean's shoe. "Okay, I'm gonna push your leg out," he says. "Help me."
Dean gazes across the grill at him in what Sam guesses is an incredulous fashion, but there isn't time to discuss what Dean can or can't do. Sam pushes Dean's foot, tries to get it through the rods.
"Come on," he mutters, puts his head down and closes his eyes and pushes.
There's a choking sounds. Sam looks up; Dean's head has fallen again, and he must have breathed in some water. He's coughing and spluttering now, head still dangerously close to the water, eyes lidded.
"No!" shouts Sam. He grabs Dean's face, splashes water on him. When it doesn't work, he curls his fingers in Dean's hair and pulls. "Stay awake!"
Instinct tells him to do something, anything, like start bodily shaking Dean or bash his head against the wall to keep him alert. He pulls at Dean's hair again, feeling panic clawing at his throat.
If Dean decides to fall asleep, there's nothing Sam can do to stop it.
"Dean!" he shouts. "Stay awake – do you understand me?!" Dean looks up at him, and Sam grabs the opportunity.
He pulls his arms back through the grill, tries to push Dean's leg out of it again, doesn't care that he could be worsening the break, just wants Dean out. His leg doesn't even move.
He grabs the tire jack's handle again, braces his own foot against Dean's, and strains both leg and arm, groaning from the exertion.
"Does – does it hurt w-when you t-touch me? I t-think it's s-supposed to," Dean stutters unexpectedly, eyelids drooping.
"What are you saying, Dean?" asks Sam, despair lacing his words. "Stop it. Wake up." He lets go of the jack again, slaps Dean's icy face, puts his fingers under Dean's chin, pushes his brother's head up.
The water is so high on the other end that it makes little difference. Dean's almost completely submerged. The few openings that Sam's managed to make through the grill don't seem to be helping much.
"Don't you dare give up. Please, Dean, please. Please," Sam says, trying to inject some firmness into his voice, some belief that giving up isn't the only option here.
He has to let go of Dean's head. He can't get them out of here if Dean's leg is stuck, and the only way to get Dean unstuck is to use the jack. And Sam needs both his aching arms for that.
Feeling sick, he lets go of Dean's head, hopes that Dean hasn't succumbed to sleep yet. He can't tell. The second Sam removes his hand, Dean's head drops. The water is up to his eyes.
Sam can feel his face crumpling as he grabs the jack's handle and let's loose an almighty heave. "For God's sake," he shouts, and there's a sudden, deafening keening, so loud that Sam thinks for a moment that God's answered his call.
It's the sound of metal tearing.
Out of the corner of his eyes, just before it happens, Sam catches sight of the grill shifting.
His foot is still braced against Dean's.
With a second to react, he shoves against Dean's foot with his own, and against all odds, it slips through the metal bars.
And the grill comes loose.
The water hits Sam with unbelievable force, slams him against one of the culvert's rounded walls and cracks his head on the cement. He hears the sound in his ears, sees white light bloom behind his closed eyes. The impact makes him gasp. He sucks in water, chokes, swallows convulsively.
His left shoulder hits something too and he feels it pop out, almost silkily.
Then it's over. He's suddenly in water that isn't trying to kill him, sinking slowly. He opens his eyes, sees nothing but dark shapes all around him. His lungs are searing, the urge to start coughing is overwhelming. He kicks his leg, forces himself in the general direction of up, though for all he knows he could be swimming deeper into his own grave.
Just when he's starting to wonder how much the actual drowning hurts, his head breaks the surface. He gasps, coughs, gasps again.
"Dean!" Sam shouts, but his voice is hoarse and broken and completely lost in the sound of rushing water and rain.
Dean's nowhere in sight.
Sam sucks in a breath and goes under again.
It's so fucking dark.
His dislocated shoulder makes him a slower swimmer.
It's his second time under when something brushes against his good arm. Sam doesn't even look (like he could see anything if he wanted to), just turns in the water and grabs.
It feels like it takes eons to get to the surface, good arm wrapped around his brother, legs kicking ferociously. It feels like it takes eons and it feels like Dean's dead and Sam can't even think.
He surfaces close to one of the embankments, manages to heave Dean up onto the mud and rock. It's uphill, and everything's even slipperier than before and Sam's arm is killing him. All he can do is dig his toes into the fine dirt and hold Dean above the water with his good arm and gasp and shudder.
He tries to convince himself it hasn't been long as he tentatively removes his hand from Dean's chest. Dean doesn't slip back into the water so Sam heaves himself up, struggles onto more level ground before turning around and dragging his brother up too.
"Come on," he hears himself say as he collapses to his knees, meaning please and no and a myriad of other things that he just can't express anymore, starts pressing down on Dean's chest with one hand without even checking because he knows Dean's not breathing. He tries not to notice that he can hardly feel Dean's heartbeat. Tries not to think about what that means, how far Dean is gone.
He does the compressions and then breathes into Dean's mouth and prays like he hasn't in months, prays that nothing's in Dean's airway, and just as he begins pleading, bargaining, I'll do anything you want, just – Dean gasps, coughs. Sam roughly turns him onto his side, watches the water stream from Dean's mouth, shivers and shakes and thinks, thankyouthankyouthankyou.
Dean doesn't wake up though and he's stopped shivering all together. They're not out of trouble yet. Sam looks up and around for the Impala, doesn't see it anywhere. Panic strikes his heart. Did Michael call the police? Did they take the car? His eyes fly across the landscape, looking everywhere, anywhere, clinging onto hope for a moment longer – and then he spots it.
On the other side of the lake.
They came up on the wrong side.
Sam doesn't even have his phone.
Okay, he thinks, quaking like a newborn bird, clutching his dislocated arm close to his body, focusing on the slow (too slow) up-down movement of Dean's chest. I can do this.
He clambers to his feet, knees almost buckling as soon as he tries to put all his weight on them, head throbbing like a bitch. Looks around for a person or a phone. Finds himself inanely willing Castiel to them, as if the angel is ever on call.
Lightning illuminates the world and in the distance, Sam catches sight of a pay phone. He glances back at Dean once and then runs in the direction of the phone. Grabs the phone off the cradle when he gets there, presses the silver buttons: 911.
He doesn't know what he tells the operator, doesn't remember the call at all. Everything starts flashing as soon as he dials the phone. One moment he's hanging up, the next he's by Dean again, and then he's on the earth, cheek pressed to mud, head throbbing viciously.
Then there's only darkness and defeat.
**
The emergency room is buzzing. It's one of those really big, busy, inner city ones, where someone is always rolling in. Victims of gunfights, drug addicts who're afraid they've overdosed, homeless people who're just there for the warmth under the pretext of having a serious injury.
Babies are screaming. A man is yelling at the nurse sitting behind the main desk, a main desk encased in bulletproof glass. There are people of every ethnicity and age. Hospital volunteers scurry here and there, looking stressed. Doctors float, assured and professional. A triage team rushes through with a gurney.
Sam is sitting on one of the bolted-down plastic chairs. A doctor is seated across from him, a small table set up to his right with an unpacked suture kit on top. He's sewing up a gash on Sam's forehead.
Sam regained consciousness in the ambulance. He didn't know how long he'd been out, but the lady standing over him had run a hand through his hair and told him they were almost at the hospital. Someone had already popped his shoulder back in by then, and he was strapped to a stretcher. He'd managed to choke out a few sentences, to tell the woman that there was a boy at the culvert in his car. She relayed the message to someone Sam couldn't see.
Where's my brother? he tried to ask after, but nothing more came out of his mouth. Before he knew it, the ambulance was jerking to a stop and he was being carted out.
He didn't see Dean. The doctor who first looked him over, strapped his shoulder and told him he had a concussion, said that Dean was being taken care of and not to worry.
Which was really helpful.
After the initial examination, they told him he'd have to sit in the waiting room. He was lucid, and though lying down was probably better for him, they had a shortage of beds. They would get him into a bed as soon as one freed up, they assured him. Sam didn't argue.
"Okay, all done," says the doctor, setting the curved stitching needle back on the portable table. Sam reaches up and brushes his fingers against the gash. He can feel its ugliness, doesn't really care. Vaguely thinks that the inside matches the out, now, and immediately berates himself for being overdramatic.
"You tell someone if you need anything," says the doctor, as she packs up the suture kit and refolds the tiny table, before walking away. Sam nods after her.
He doesn't know where Dean is. No room number, no general direction.
At least he's somewhere on earth, Sam thinks. That has to count for something.
Two feet away, a couple of men get into a fistfight. Two armed security guards saunter over and wrench them apart, putting them in two different corners.
Sam starts to drift amidst the cries and shouts and loud voices, amidst the ever-moving surroundings, like he's been drifting in life, lately. Not really going anywhere.
Once upon a time, he had a purpose.
Now all he's good for is chasing after his quasi-suicidal brother.
Sam closes his eyes, pushes away that anger that always seems to burst out of nowhere, presses it deep into the recesses of his mind.
It's not Dean he's angry at, though.
Until the day Sam dies, he will regret it, regret not being able to get Dean out of that deal, like he promised. And the guilt will never go away. It's the way Winchesters are, he realizes.
Always telling beautiful lies.
Always making promises and never keeping them, so that in the end, the promises just become empty shells of what-ifs and no meaning. Sam wonders now if, when he told Dean, I'll save you, Dean actually understood it to mean, You're going to die no matter what.
"Mr. Dugray?"
Sam looks up. The ER is slightly quieter now. A doctor is standing before him, wrapped in green scrubs. He's got glasses and a sympathetic expression. The clock on the nurse's desk a few feet behind him reads 8:45 am. Sam's been sitting in this waiting room for hours.
"Your brother is awake now. You can see him if you like."
Sam stands immediately, legs and arms still shaky. The doctor lifts a hand.
"Your brother is very lucky, Mr. Dugray. According to what you told us, he was under water and not breathing for about fifteen minutes. If he hadn't already been in a severely hypothermic state, there is no doubt that he would be dead. Fortunately, we managed to raise his temperature in a desirable amount of time. We were forced to flush his body with warm fluids to do so, but… no harm, no foul, right?" He takes a breath, glances up at Sam with a small smile.
Sam says nothing.
"We don't think he's in any immediate danger," he goes on when it becomes apparent that Sam has no questions, comments or derogatory observations to hurl at the doctor. "We set his leg too, but the break was pretty bad and we won't know how well it'll heal for a while. I've seen people with similar breaks – many never recover fully."
Sam's temples throb in time with his pulse.
"And… I don't want you talking to him unless he speaks first. Understand? If he'd rather sleep, let him," the doctor adds, not unkindly.
Sam nods. He doesn't seem to be able to form words, anyway. Not that that's surprising. Words are useless when you've forgotten how to use them.
He follows the doctor to Dean's room, which is nothing more or less than a bed surrounded by a curtain, and hovers a few feet away until the doctor kindly drifts off.
There's a small gap in the curtains and Sam peers through them. Dean is lying on the bed with his eyes closed, wrapped in heated blankets. There's an IV; the warm fluids the doctor was talking about, Sam guesses, and a machine keeping tabs on Dean's heart rate. Dean's leg is in a cast; the bed is elevated slightly at the foot. He looks pale and faded.
Sam feels, for a moment, like he can sandpaper away the spider silk cracks that make up Dean just by looking long enough.
Dean opens his eyes, as if he can feel Sam's gaze, and maybe he can. They stare at each other for a long moment, until Sam's heart imitates a triphammer and he begins to think that Dean won't speak and he'll have to leave because the doctor said don't speak to him unless he speaks first and doctors know best, right?
A small gleam comes into Dean's eyes, a shadow of something that once was, and it makes Sam ache suddenly.
"Handsome devil, aren't I?" he says, in a muffled hospital voice, closing his eyes again.
"I'm just giving you an idea of what the freak show you're getting shipped to is gonna be like," mumbles Sam half-heartedly, slipping through the curtain.
Dean makes a little sound that Sam thinks is a snort. "You'd fit in better, Frankenstein."
There's no chair. Sam stands near Dean's bed and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Dean cracks open one eye. "Dude, grab a chair. Or just sit on the bed. You're making me nervous."
It wasn't his intention, but Sam's not complaining. After the stunt Dean pulled…
But he parts the curtain again, spots a chair sitting near a beat-up ECG and drags it back to Dean's cubicle.
The chair's too small. He has to force himself into it. Dean watches his discomfort with a slightly amused glance. Sam can see him formulating a joke or a jab. It's the ever-present Dean Winchester coping mechanism: always needing to keep his game face on, be cool and casual and laidback.
Sam had always been able to see through it before. Now, it doesn't even form flimsy screen and sometimes Sam wants to grab his brother and shake him and say, It's okay to show me who you really are. It's okay to be ashamed and afraid. But you have to stop trying to hide it or you'll never move on.
"Doctor says your leg is pretty—"
"Fucked up?" interrupts Dean. "Yeah, he told me. But hey – I'm a good healer, right?" He actually attempts a trademark cocky grin.
Sam nods, purses his lips, crosses his legs and then uncrosses them. Reaching up, he fingers the stitched-up gash on his forehead. He shifts his right arm around, trying to get it comfortable in the sling the doctors have given him, as a precaution. His body aches, his head feels heavy from exhaustion.
"Jesus Christ, Sam," Dean mutters. "Stop fidgeting."
(Stop trying so hard, stop pretending everything's not okay when everything's perfectly fine, stop thinking that you can understand when you can't. )
Sam can't stop fidgeting. He needs to say something, right now, but he doesn't want to start yelling at the broken man wrapped in thermal blankets.
He can feel anger tickling the back of his throat, furious words just itching to come out and deal Dean a cutting blow.
They're wrong. It's wrong. He needs to make Dean understand, not make him curl further into himself.
"So," he says, running his hands up and down his thighs. "Good lemming imitation back there."
Dean opens his eyes then, and turns to face Sam. "I'm not suicidal."
There's a moment of silence in which they try to stare each other down. Outside the curtain, someone is shouting for a volunteer.
"No," agrees Sam eventually. "Suicidal people try to off themselves – you just want someone else to do it."
Dean shakes his head like he thinks Sam is being stupid, looks away. "No – I don't."
"Then what, Dean?" asks Sam. "Explain it to me. Make me understand, because I can't see any other reason for what you did."
I'll come back and get you.
Dean sighs, looks away, at the curtain surrounding his bed. Its pale pink and not completely opaque; Sam can see people moving around beyond it.
Sam bites the insides of his cheeks and looks up at the ceiling.
"I need you to get your head straight," he tries, words like bricks in his mouth. But Dean isn't talking (explaining) and it's all Sam can think of. "I can't do – we can't go on like this."
"And what's wrong with my head?" asks Dean, and Sam can see anger flaring in his eyes.
"You ran off without cover," Sam points out.
Dean raises his eyebrows slightly, looks right at Sam. "I'm not suicidal," he repeats.
"Did you open the culvert?"
"Sam…"
"Did – you – open – the culvert?"
"Let it go, Sam," mutters Dean.
"No, I'm not going to just 'let it go'," says Sam, closing his eyes, hands up near his head like he's inches away from ripping his hair out. "Did you? Did you stand there and unscrew the bolts and remove the gate and go in on your own?"
Dean doesn't say anything, just shifts around on his bed like he's trying to get comfortable.
"Why would you do that?" asks Sam softly.
"You didn't want to do it – thought I'd save you the trouble."
"I didn't want to do it tonight, because you – we were dead on our feet. You said you'd come back for me. Instead you went and took the gate off and decided to do the job yourself."
There's a brief pause in which Dean picks at the loose threads on his blanket. Then, he says, "I didn't know the kid would follow me. Hell, didn't even know the kid was there until the kelpie grabbed him." He sounds disgusted with himself. But that's all – nothing else. Not regretful, not apologetic. Just disgusted.
Sam stares at him for a long time, pinches the bridge of his nose as hard as he possibly can. "I'm not – I don't – do you think I care about the kid?"
"Uh… yes?" Dean hazards. Sam swallows hard and Dean adds, "Look – can we just do this tomorrow?"
Sam clenches his teeth so hard he expects them to sink through his gums.
Dean catches his expression, narrows his eyes. "What? What do you want me to say, Sam? Huh? Enlighten me, why don't you?"
"That – that you were wrong to run off without cover!" exclaims Sam, waving his hands. "You do not run off without me. When the fuck will you get that? What do I have to do to make you get it, because whatever it is, I'll do it, Dean. You just tell me what the fuck it is."
Dean rolls his eyes, settles back into his pillows. "Don't be melodramatic, Sam. We had to get rid of the kelpie."
"No," says Sam and he curls his hands around the armrests of the too-small chair he's forced into until his fingers go numb. "No. We didn't. You did. You and this sudden complex that you've developed."
Dean's eyes go hard at that, harder than they already are, huge Hell-built walls coming up in three seconds flat. "And what complex is that?"
"This saving – hero – this—" and Sam can't even put the words together, wants to reach out and start shaking his brother and wonders if it would just be better for him to step out and get a fucking grip. His head hurts and his arms hurt and he just wants to know what to say, what'll make Dean listen, wishes an angel would fall from the heavens with a scroll from God and just give him the answer.
"Jesus," mutters Dean. He glances away, at the pink curtains, at the miniature clock on the night table, at anything. "You're making this bigger than it is. Just – I'm alive, OK?"
"It wasn't your fault," says Sam, as calmly and clearly as he can.
Dean gives him a cold smirk. "Really? Wasn't it? Made the choice, didn't I?"
"It was Hell—"
"So what?" asks Dean icily. "That makes it 'all better'? That makes it acceptable? We hunt things that are evil because they've been in Hell, Sam. So, is what they do acceptable? Because after all, 'it's Hell', right?"
"You wouldn't have—"
"I did."
"You made the choice to stop."
"Made the choice to start too. You think they forced me to say yes? That Alastair sprung half a dozen demons on me and then asked if I wanted off the rack? There was no torture when he asked me, Sam. There was never any torture when he asked me."
Sam starts to say you couldn't have held out, because they let Dean taste-test freedom while offering it to him and that would have made it all the more difficult to resist and Sam can see it clear as day, and he wants Dean to see it too. But Dean's not looking at him anymore and all the fight is rushing out of Sam.
He slumps back into his chair, presses finger and thumb into his eyes, feels slightly dizzy.
He opens his eyes to find Dean giving him an appraising look. "Go get a motel room," he says. "You look like crap."
"'Get a motel room'?" says Sam wearily. "That's it?"
Dean sighs loudly. "Sam, I get it, I do. I screwed up, okay?"
"Do you know how close you came to—?"
"Yeah – close. Doc told me. Don't sugarcoat anything here. Apparently he went easy on me 'cause of the kid, though."
"I don't care what you did," Sam attempts.
"I know, Sammy." But I do, Sam hears and it takes a lot of self-control not to start on Dean again.
"You'd better not pull something like that again," he says finally.
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Without me, I mean. Because, you know, someone needs to be there to take pictures," Sam mutters, shrugging slightly.
Dean gets a little light back in his eyes. "Funny."
"You should get some sleep."
"I'm not the one with the concussion," Dean points out.
"Wow, your doctor was a chatterbox, huh?"
"Yes, she was," says Dean, looking smug.
"Oh, she. No wonder."
"And what's the supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, nothing," says Sam, struggling out of his chair. He almost topples right back down as soon as he's on his feet, but manages to keep his balance.
"You gonna be okay?" asks Dean after a brief second in which, Sam imagines, he'd had an epic internal battle on whether or not to ask.
"Yes," says Sam. "I'll call a taxi or take the bus. Don't have the car, anyway."
"You – you what?"
"I didn't drive us here, Dean. We came on an ambulance."
"Yeah – but—"
"Relax. I'll pick the car up tomorrow. It'll be fine."
"Better be."
"Well, if it's not, you know who to blame," Sam says, a little less jokey now.
"Yeah, yeah, mother," says Dean petulantly. "Now get the hell outta here so I can get some shuteye."
"Okay," replies Sam. He stops at the curtains, turns back. "I—"
"I'm not an idiot, Sam," says Dean flatly.
Sam gazes at him for a long moment and then nods. Okay. I'm trusting you.
Outside, the ER is growing restless again. It's early morning and people have started tumbling in again. The day starts early and ends late here. A nurse Sam recognizes corners him in the waiting room, just as he's about to exit and thrusts some papers in his direction. Insurance, she tells him.
"Can I do it tomorrow?" Sam's head is hurting again. "I won't skip out on you, I swear. My brother's still here."
She looks doubtful. City hospital, Sam remembers. Lots of people who can't pay.
The nurse peers closer, her eyes flicking from one of his to the other. "You had a concussion, right?" she says. "I think can get you a bed now – or at least, a comfortable chair. You can fill the forms and then leave."
Sam glances back at the hallway he's just left. "Can it be close to there?" he asks, gesturing with his chin.
"Sure thing," says the nurse, beaming suddenly. She turns around and shouts for a volunteer.
Ten minutes later, Sam finds himself in a well-cushioned (and large) chair, close to Dean's curtained bed.
Dean doesn't know he's there, which is fine by Sam. He can hear his brother's level breathing alternating with the beeps of the machine he's attached to.
He gets only halfway through the forms before his chin drops and he drifts away, to the sounds that prove that Dean's alive.
After all, as long as their hearts are beating and their lungs are filling, they have all the time in the world to mend.
End