A Road Un- travelled (AU Devil's Trap ending)

John threw back his head without warning, roaring aloud as writhing black smoke spilled out of his open mouth, filling the cabin with curdling dark mist until it dissolved into the floor. When the fog had dissipated, the tension remained, almost tangible, so that Sam stood unmoving, every muscle tensed, holding his breath because he worried that if he released it he would disturb the still present creature which was, for the moment, dormant.

It was several seconds before Sam let out his long, shaky breath, and he felt the air move, releasing some of the charged atmosphere in the small room. He relaxed his fingers, allowing the revolver to drop onto the floorboards with a resounding clatter. Sam blinked, hard. Get it together. He shook himself mentally, and braced himself for the sight he would be faced with when he turned around.

It wasn't much worse than he had expected. Dean was still conscious, propped on his side, visibly struggling to keep his head raised and watch his brother's actions. His t-shirt was glossy with blood, and scarlet stood out brightly on his white lips. The dark pool beneath him had only grown slightly since Sam had left his side.

Sam dropped to his knees beside his brother, trying to recall long-ago first aid training, even while his head was still hazy with shock and he struggled to achieve clear, rational thought. He hovered awkwardly, holding his hands out ready to help, but afraid to touch his brother's raw, torn flesh for fear of hurting him.

Dean rolled onto his back, no longer finding the energy to hold his head up, and he flinched as he moved, letting out a shaky sigh which echoed Sam's earlier one. Dean fixed his brother's twitching, panicky ark eyes with his own glassy green stare. 'Hey,' he whispered. 'It's gonna be ok,' he assured, nodding his head slightly for emphasis. Sam swallowed.

'Yeah… yeah,' he muttered, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder, no longer sure which of them was reassuring the other.

Behind him, he heard John cough and roll over, starting to crawl towards his sons. 'Sammy…? How bad? Will he need stitches?' He grimaced. 'Hospital?'

'Ah…' Sam looked his brother up and down, wondering how his father could have any doubt. 'I'm gonna call an ambulance,' he said, squeezing his brother's shoulder before rising slowly and crossing the room to find his cell phone.

'We can drive…' protested John, crawling up to Dean and biting his lip as he took in the seriousness of the wounds.

Sam's head spun as he straightened from rummaging in his bag, and he steadied himself on the wall as the wave of nausea passed, then finally answered: 'No… I don't think that would be a good idea.'

John raised his head and inspected his younger son, noting his swollen face and lost, overwhelmed expression. 'Yeah, alright,' he agreed.

Sam dialled. The woman who picked up had a slow, soft voice, as though she was striving to sound calm in order to reassure the panicked individuals who phoned 911. However, her crooning had the opposite effect, grating on Sam's nerves, and he answered her questions through gritted teeth.

'Alright, my dear. Don't worry. They'll be with you soon. It's going to be alright, just don't you panic…'

Sam growled and slammed the phone shut, arguably harder than was necessary, then dropped it onto the cluttered table.

John was leaning against the wall beside his son, tying a strip of his shirt around his leg as a bandage. Sam felt no guilt, watching his father wince as he tightened the knot, and he wondered at himself, but knew that he had had no choice, and moreover, that his father was angry with him, not for shooting him, but for failing to shoot him. God, my family is twisted, he thought.

'Dad, I…'

'I'll go wait for that ambulance. This place ain't easy to spot from the road,' John mumbled, cutting him off. He rose stiffly, and limped out of the door. Sam watched him go and sighed, but a large part of him was relieved. Now, at least he could deal with his problems one at a time.Turning to the 'problem' in question, Sam finally surfaced from his shock enough for the remains of his first aid training to creep into his mind. Put pressure on the wound. Stop the blood flow. Calm the patient. If he panics, his heart rate goes up, and he bleeds faster…

Sam shrugged off his jacket and bunched it up, pressing it hesitantly, but with increasing strength, against his brother's chest. Dean, it seemed, was still aware, and he sucked in air through his teeth, his eyes flickering open, his face tensed with pain.

'Hey- you still with me?'

'Uh, yeah… I guess'

His voice was weary and hoarse, but Sam felt filled with warm, liquid relief at the sound of it.

'Where's Dad?' Dean asked, for the second time that night.

'He went to flag down the ambulance'

Dean frowned slightly, but nodded. 'He ok?'

'Yeah… he's pissed,' Sam admitted.

Dean's lips curved into a lopsided smile. 'He'll get over it. It was the only choice, Sammy…'

'Yeah, I know'

'You ok?'

'I'll live,' Sam answered grimly, and then amended, seeing the concern in his brother's eyes: 'Yes, I'm fine. Really, I'm ok. The last thing we need you to do right now is worry about me.'

Dean conceded this with a small nod.

'Dean, you know… the demon… it lies. It wasn't Dad, saying all that…'

'Yeah, Sam, I know,' Dean sighed. He was grateful for Sam's effort, but at that moment it was the last issue he wanted to discuss. His tone wasn't sharp, but Sam recognised his feelings, and didn't push the matter any further.

Both brothers lapsed into silence. Dean found himself concentrating on breathing, and closed his eyes to focus on this task, which became more and more difficult, as every breath aggravated his burning skin, grating his ribcage against his wounds. He could hear the air gurgling softly in his throat as more blood trickled into his ruptured lungs. I can taste the iron in my blood, he thought idly, recalling the demon's words from earlier. He turned his head and spat onto the dusty floor, not wanting the reminder of the metallic flavour on his tongue.

Sam looked down at his brother, pale and bleeding on the floor. But not broken. Still not broken, he reflected proudly.

'Hey Dean?'

His brother's eyes flickered open.

'I know you don't want to have that conversation now. But you should know: it was wrong. I need you, ok? I don't know what I'd do… So you just hang in there, ok?'

Dean half smiled again. 'Hell of a time to go sappy on me, Sammy'

'It's Sam'

David Matthews leaned forward in his seat, eyes wide, trying to penetrate the thick darkness at the edges of the road.

'The turning should be along here somewhere'

Next to him, Marie Drew nodded. She was frowning, tense, biting her lip. Working closely with her for nearly six months now, David felt that he could read her feelings fairly well.

'What's up?' he asked.

She shrugged. 'I just… it makes me uneasy, calls like this one… middle of nowhere, injuries like from a fight.' David nodded, and patted her gently on the arm in what he hoped was a comforting way. He knew Marie had had some frightening experiences in the past. This wasn't an easy job.

'Hey, is there a turning there?'

She squinted into the darkness, waiting for the headlights to reveal the opening in the trees that lined the road.

'Yeah. Must be it'

Marie swung the wheel round, skilfully manipulating the clumsy vehicle onto the narrow track. A short distance up, the headlights revealed a tall man standing in the road, and Marie braked, and then killed the engine. She shared a look with David, whose kind eyes gave her silent encouragement, then took a deep breath, opened her door and stepped down.

'Sir, did you call for an ambulance?' David asked in a professional tone.

'Yeah,' replied the man gruffly, limping away from them, towards an old black car, parked in front of a wooden cabin.

'Hang on, sir!' Marie yelped, trotting after him. 'Come on, it's ok, we need to look at that leg…'

'No… my son,' he explained, motioning her to follow him into the cabin. Somewhat calmed by the man's attitude – in shock, maybe, but not violent - Marie followed him. David walked on behind her, shuddering slightly in the warm night.

Sam sighed heavily in relief when his father opened the door, followed by a short dark woman in her thirties and a thin, sandy haired man who looked about forty. The woman grimaced slightly at the sight of the brothers, but she recovered quickly, masking her disquiet with a professional smile. The man's face remained entirely impassive.

'I'm Marie,' said the paramedic, kneeling beside Dean, and glancing across him at Sam.

'Sam… my brother, Dean,' Sam offered, the words harder to find now, as the paramedics' presence drove home the reality of the situation. He carefully pulled his sodden jacket away from Dean's chest, and winced in sympathy as his brother let out a choked gasp.

'It's ok,' soothed Marie, stroking the young man's hair with one hand, and schooling her features to remain smooth as she inspected his blood-soaked chest. God, what happened? she wondered, running her eyes over the swollen face of the other boy, and the older man's injured leg, which David was tending silently. However, despite the strange and suspicious circumstances, she realised that her apprehension had evaporated, leaving only pity and compassion. She worked carefully, cleaning the wounds and covering them with temporary dressings to slow down the blood flow until it could be fixed at the hospital.

The two brothers were quiet as she worked, occasionally exchanging whispered assurances. She admired their composure. Sam held his brother's hand, and murmured soft words of comfort whenever her ministrations elicited a groan from the other's throat. Dean was clearly holding onto his consciousness by a thread – probably for his brother's benefit, she suspected- but he smiled up at her through a haze of pain.

'You'll need to get this checked out properly when you get to the hospital,' David was saying. 'Can you follow us?' he asked Sam.

'I…'

'I' going to need space to work in the back of the ambulance, if he's going to stay alive until we get in,' he explained, bluntly.

'Yeah, ok. I'll follow with Dad'

'Sammy…'

'You sure?' Marie didn't want todisagree with her partner, but the boy seemed pretty shaken.

'Yeah. I'm over the initial… shock, now. I'll be ok'

David nodded, satisfied, and helped Marie load Dean onto the stretcher.

'Hey,' muttered Dean suddenly, more to distract himself from the pain then anything else, 'Be careful with my car.'

Sam grinned, and followed as the two paramedics carried his brother out to the ambulance. Marie climbed out again and shut the doors. Before walking round to the driver's side, she smiled at Sam, patting him on the arm.

'We'll do our best for him, honey.' Reluctant to give him false hope, she left it at that. He nodded, and then joined his father in the car.

Dean was disappointed that the female paramedic – Marie – was driving. Her kind eyes were calming, while her partner's face remained constantly indifferent, and he made no attempt to converse with his patient, leaving Dean to concentrate, again, on his own laboured, agonizing breathing. I never knew this could be so difficult, he reflected bitterly, inhaling carefully, trying not to move his ribs. It was getting harder to draw air through all the blood pooling in is throat.

The ambulance's motion smoothed as Marie pulled out onto the main road. 'Hang in there, alright, Dean?' she called, glancing in her mirror. Dean grunted a vague reply.

The other paramedic – David – finally turned from fiddling with the complex medical equipment above Dean's head, and looked directly at him for the first time, grinning. Dean felt his blood turn turgid and cold throughout his body. The man's eyes were a sickly, unnatural yellow.

Sam pulled out onto the road, following the ambulance's taillights.

'I'm surprised at you, Sammy, his father began. Here we go, Sam thought grimly. 'I thought we saw eye to eye on this… killing this demon comes first, before me, before everything.'

Sam frowned at the taillights in front of him, Marie's significant silence still echoing in his ears, and shook his head.

'No, sir. Not before everything'

His father grunted, not satisfied.

'Look,' Sam continued. 'We still have the Colt; we still have the one bullet left. We can just start over. We already found the demon once…. what the hell?'

'Oh, no… no, not you again…' Dean muttered frantically, trying to wriggle away, but finding that every movement produced an agonizing twinge, and anyway, where could he go?

'Is everything ok?' called Marie, flicking her eyes to the mirror again.

'Yeah… he's starting to panic, I think he's delirious,' replied her partner, placing restraining hands on his shoulders, and grinning down conspiratorially at Dean's wide-eyed face.

'No!' Dean choked, 'Please, pull over, help!' he begged her, uncharacteristically, despising the palpable weakness in his voice.

'It's ok, honey,' she replied calmly. Dean closed his eyes and slumped in defeat.

'You just can't win, can you, Dean?' taunted the demon quietly.

Dean opened his eyes again with great effort. 'You bastard…' he whispered.

'There's no point in your fighting… you're no match for me, even the three of you together. Not even close,' it bragged, a little too loudly.

'David…?' Marie called from the front.

'Oh, everything's fine,' it replied cheerfully, reaching into the front.

Dean gasped as a sickening crack filled the ambulance. 'No…'

The demon grinned at him again as the driverless vehicle veered off the road into the trees.

The two men's conversation was abruptly aborted as they watched, open mouthed in horror. The ambulance turned suddenly, and trundled over the edge of the road, rocking its way down the short slope before colliding violently with a thick tree trunk and coming to rest, leaning precariously against the tree.

Sam let the Impala roll to a stop at the side of the road, and climbed out. Is this really happening? he wondered, dazed by the shock of one more disaster in a night full of disasters.

Dean was relieved to let unconsciousness claim him as the ambulance stopped moving in a screech of tortured metal. However, it was only a few minutes before his eyes flickered open again.

In fact, Dean's helpless position on the metal bed had protected him from the chaos caused by the crash. The paramedic's face was bruised where items falling from the cabinets had hit him, but he was still smiling, his eyes glowing hideously.

Dean felt himself seized around the shoulders by arms much stronger than they should have been: skinny, pale and freckly, yet completely immovable.

The man kicked the doors open so forcefully that one of them fell from its hinges. He dragged Dean backwards out of the ambulance, holding him around the throat and allowing his legs to drag along behind. Dean gaped desperately, but for all the air he caught in his mouth, none could get past the barrier in his throat to feed his starving lungs. He struggled feebly, clawing at the strong arm with trembling fingers, but the demon barely seemed to notice his efforts.

Darkness gathered at the edges of his vision, but he heard the car door slam, and his brother's voice yelling his name, before he passed out.

Sam stopped dead, maybe ten yards away from the possessed paramedic. Curses chased each other around his head, but he struggled to put together a coherent thought. He simply stood, frozen, staring at his brother's white face, closed eyes and bloody chest, his body, hanging limp, and his neck still encircled by an arm. Please, please, don't be dead, he prayed silently.

He heard John scrambling down the slope, stopping beside him, pulling back the hammer on the Colt until it clicked, deafening in the silence.

The yellow-eyed man laughed delightedly, ducking down slightly behind his hostage so that he was entirely shielded by Dean's limp body. Golden eyes peered at them over Dean's shoulder.

'Is it worth it, John?' he chuckled. He poked Dean in the ribs with his free hand, producing a quiet, strangled moan. 'He's not dead yet.'

Sam marvelled at how relief and horror could both hit him so hard in the same second. 'Dad, no… please… not before everything,' he repeated.

'I'm sorry, Sam,' John grated, grim and determined, his hand rock steady on the gun, despite the single tear tracing a path down his grimy cheek.

'What about me?' asked the demon brightly, gesturing at its own stolen body. 'I only wanted to help. I'm an innocent bystander,' it wheedled mockingly, dwelling sneeringly on the word 'innocent'.

John's mouth twitched, but his decision was already made, and he had never in his life been persuaded against a choice he had determined. His finger tightened on the trigger, and he sent up a silent prayer for forgiveness. Then squeezed.

Sam, on impulse, threw himself sideways, colliding heavily with his father. The shot rang out, and discharged harmlessly into the darkness.

The demon's lips curled into a sneer, and it released Dean, who collapsed onto the ground without a sound.

'Oh dear, Sammy,' it taunted, speaking slowly, relishing every word. 'Was that the last one?'

With that, the man finally tipped back his head and spilled black writhing smoke from his mouth with an anguished cry. Then it was gone, leaving the four men in the still dark.

David the paramedic searched for the right words, but could think of nothing remotely appropriate to say. His mind was in turmoil, back in control of his body without a clue as to why, or how, or what had happened to him. After several second, he gave up trying to understand or resolve the situation and let his training take over, dropping to his knees beside the fallen man in front of him, and starting to try resuscitating him.

Sam gaped at his father as if he were a complete stranger. He even wondered whether John was possessed again, even knowing that he wasn't. Surely it's human nature to know that life is worth more than revenge… Two lives. His son's life…Searching his father's face, Sam could see nothing but simmering fury, and he wondered how long it had been since the hunt had claimed John's humanity.