Author Notes: I did another thing. My fangirling self pretty much lives and breathes Providence at this point, so with the opportunity to write something else taking place in the universe, you'd better believe I'm going to be all over that. This is a prequel, of sorts, to For What It's Worth, which in itself is, of course, a story that takes place in Nova42's Providence universe.

All the thanks and praises in all the land go to Nova, AKA Little Miss Crazy Face, for creating this world, and constantly inspiring my muse, and being so damn cool you couldn't even handle it.

Digging My Own Grave

Is there peace beyond the rage?

Tell me where this truly all went wrong

I've been walking through the graves

Dancing with the lonely and the strong

November 28, 2017

The first thing Sam noticed was the smell.

Upon stepping out of the vehicle, he was overtaken – nearly rocked back on his heels – by a smothering, choking stench of rot and decay. Of the honeysuckle sweetness of dead and decomposing plants. Of dirt turned to mud, and stale rainwater collected in the dips and ruts in the gravel lot. The overpowering, noxious odor stung his nostrils and went to merciless work unraveling the very last vestiges of optimism he'd clung to throughout the short-enough drive from Lebanon, white-knuckling a ghostly sliver of hope along with the steering wheel and making silent pleas for the opportunity to cash in on one final miracle he'd never fully deserve.

He might not have deserved it, but Dean surely did. After everything they'd been through together; after every temptation they'd cast aside and every obstacle they'd managed to sidestep and every last-night-on-Earth they'd somehow survived, Dean deserved anything but to be inside that building.

The group of six stood without speaking in the shadow of the pitch-black, tomb-silent warehouse, its crumbling brick façade looming eerie and intimidating against the backdrop of a polluted and perpetually matte, ashen sky. They stood with one agenda, one goal, and one thought bouncing between them: nothing could possibly be found alive in such a place. Fuck the omens, and fuck hope, and fuck what anyone deserved. Even the cockroaches had abandoned ship.

Don't think like that, Sam forcibly berated himself, and everyone else by association, screaming desperate denials over what logic and rational thinking and years of experience had been roaring in his head since the pair of dusty Jeeps pulled to a stop.

He could only imagine, left to the unattended devices, unbridled fury and morbid creativity of the Hollow Men, the sorts of horribly loud and unrestrained sounds Dean would have been brought to making by their hand. But he and the others had found themselves in the godforsaken middle of nowhere, though somehow, and so frustratingly, no more than two hundred miles from the relative safety of the Men of Letters bunker. Much too close to have warranted the five goddamn days it took to figure out where his stolen brother had been held.

Had maybe been held.

The winding, narrow cut of road that led them here was overgrown with dense weeds and tall grass, and the warehouse and surrounding area had clearly been abandoned for years, maybe even before the Darkness took hold of the world. Sam had butted heads with three dead ends already, but this right here seemed the perfect place to put someone you didn't want to be found, or even heard, while you stripped away everything that made them who they were just because you could.

Simply put, it felt like the place. The broken, desolate-looking building, with its rows of narrow, broken or blown-out windows and long-dead ivy creeping menacingly up the red brick exterior, dried and brown and brittle. And still, without the sign of life of even a faintest breeze shifting the stiffened tendrils. It didn't feel like a place where Sam was meant to discover his big brother alive.

It felt like the place where they were supposed to find Dean's body.

A probably useless field kit of medical supplies slung over her shoulder, Paige stepped up beside him with a crunch of boot heel on gravel and laid a tentative, warm hand on his arm. She wanted Sam to hear her, and waited for him to make eye contact before speaking. "Don't give up on him yet. You don't know what we'll find here, Sam."

It wasn't the rote spiel of the innately compassionate comforting the seemingly hopeless, but like she knew, and if she was able to read him so easily and accurately then he wasn't doing as well as he used to, or as well as he should, keeping up a strong face and impenetrable front. And regardless of what they found inside that building, whether Dean came home with them alive or dead, whole or in pieces or not at all, those were the types of slips Sam couldn't afford. Not anymore, not in their world.

"Split up," he said in response, hardening his tone along with his expression. "Two per floor. Colin, you're with me." Not Paige, so that he had two-thirds of the building covered by someone who truly appreciated the gravity of the situation. There wasn't a face among them he wouldn't trust with his own life, or they wouldn't be there on that run. Even so, Sam knew his priorities might not have aligned with those of the rest, and he desperately needed the odds to land in his favor.

Paige's soft brown eyes lingered on his face a moment, trying to gauge his thoughts and brimming with a fairly new, but deep, familial concern for the both of them.

He gave her the same tight nod he used to get from his brother, when Dean was still willing to give it and Sam still needed it. The one that said lock it up, and do a job.

She narrowed her gaze and returned the motion. She tapped the walkie at her hip, meaning for Sam to call her if they found him.

But as Sam decided on their point of ingress and stepped into the building, its empty, desolate feeling finally overtook him fully, and he couldn't help but think there wouldn't be much for her to do, even if he got the opportunity to make that call.

It was cold and damp and smelled just as stale inside the warehouse, and it was as empty as Sam had anticipated; a kind of chilly, uninhabited barrenness that demanded even more silence from those who happened over the threshold. So the group complied and moved forward soundlessly but deliberately, their path guided by flashlight beams that cut through thick swirls of dust, and stepped around puddles and chunks of debris that had come loose from the crumbling walls and ceiling of the long-unattended structure.

At Sam's urging, Paige and Mark broke away to climb the first set of stairs they came upon. Faces set and weapons raised, Jacob and Amanda continued forward to scope out the main level as he jerked the nose of his pistol and motioned for Colin to descend the stairway to the basement. In the dark and vacant building, the presence of their guns felt more like some sort of security blanket than necessity, but those days, there was no telling who or what you'd happen upon each time you ventured out into the world, and Sam led with a firm, alert grip on the Beretta.

They tested the rotting wooden risers, which bent and creaked underfoot but held their weight. The hunter and former soldier made quick work of the narrow staircase once it was decided with a curt exchanging of nods they wouldn't violently plummet to the concrete floor waiting below.

Sam's boot touched down and scraped against the pebbled, watery cement, and he went to work immediately surveying the crypt-like subterranean level. The wide, sweeping beam of his flashlight illuminated questionable-looking wooden supports and chipped concrete walls, a few sizeable mounds of fallen ceiling pieces that would make the trip back upstairs seem all the more treacherous, but no Dean.

There was a presumably broken pipe and residual slow, steady drip coming from somewhere in the cellar but it somehow sounded like it was everywhere, echoing harshly through the large, horribly empty space, bouncing from the moldy, pock-marked walls of the basement and setting Sam's teeth on edge.

"He's not here, Sam," Colin offered from somewhere behind him, in a low tone that suggested they'd crossed the threshold from securing the room into wasting time. It wasn't safe to spend too long in one place, and the ex-military man had grown understandably wary after only the few moments the group had been stagnant in this location. The two Jeeps in the lot were laid out like Christmas morning for any infected that might have been in the area, announcing their presence and vulnerability as good as a blinking neon sign.

He had been with them since almost the beginning, since the state of the world turned the corner from regrettably insufferable to barely survivable, and they'd spent months in the trenches together. Sam trusted and respected Colin, and he knew the man was right, but every tense, coiled, sleep-deprived part of him was itching to turn on a dime and throttle him for even thinking such things. To give into long-suppressed reckless abandon and throw Colin against one of those unforgiving cinderblock walls, scream in his face and inflict the sort of bodily harm he'd been imagining his brother had been subjected to since Dean and his team failed to return from their last mission.

But once more, Sam knew he couldn't afford it. Not the emotion, and certainly not the loss of control. Dean hadn't been the only one ambushed, and they'd discovered the others in pieces. Three men who had been viciously torn apart for no other reason than they were by Dean's side when the Hollow Men came for him. The visceral memory of their fate was a stark enough reminder that were more lives at stake than his or Dean's. That he was responsible for these people who had ventured out of the safe zone and volunteered to put their own asses on the line for a slim chance at bringing Dean home. If he was forced to give his brother up for the sake of the many, Sam could do it. He'd done it before.

Even so, some part of him knew it coming in: that this last tip was a legitimate one, and they had finally found him, and Sam had about a thirty-three percent chance of picking the level where Dean had been held. Which also meant, as had become nearly laughably habitual, that he had a better than even chance of being wrong from the jump.

The walkie-talkie in his jacket pocket squawked and crackled, and Paige's softly accented voice filtered through device and fabric as he scrambled to retrieve it. "Sam."

For some inexplicable reason, Sam turned his back to Colin as he raised the walkie and answered the call. "Yeah."

Her tone wasn't relieved or even frantic, but somber. Grave. "We've got him."

Sam's heart skipped a few beats, took its time in getting going again. He'd been constructing gruesome mental images for days in an attempt to prepare himself for the worst, but finally faced with the reality of his brother's fate, he didn't pause to entertain the options. Until he himself had eyes on Dean, we've got him was going to have to be enough to keep the world on its axis, even as Paige's tone implied take your time.

Sam closed his eyes, removed any trace of emotion from his voice. "Where?"

"Top floor."

All intentions and facades of strength aside, Sam gaped soundlessly as any response eluded him. In one blink, he'd become untrustworthy, the very moment he had feared was going to come regardless of the outcome of their excursion. A tangible shift of power, when he was no longer able to lead the group because he could no longer handle it. Another example of the murk caused by and brought about by a lapse of emotion, another slip he shouldn't have allowed.

Colin took over, lifting his own walkie-talkie and answering Paige with a curt, though not entirely insensitive, "We'll be right there."

Sam knew he had to be strong; for Dean, and for them all. But that knowledge alone could only take him so far, and a firm hand at his elbow was required before he was able to propel himself forward.

The trek back up the rickety staircase was somehow both the longest journey of Sam's life, while also not taking nearly as long as he would have liked. It was one he didn't want to end, because things would never be the same once he finished that excruciating trip from basement to second story and laid eyes on what the Hollow Men had done to his brother.

On what they'd left of him for Sam to find.

He crested the stairs at the top floor and found himself in a large, open room, cold and dark, its windows blacked out where they weren't broken by the elements or ethereal rage. The walls were warded with all manner of temporary enchantments and sigils, only some of which he recognized, and that might have accounted for the time it took to come up with a solid location.

All things considered, Sam wasn't doing much to take in the scenery when his eyes were locked on the figure hanging before him. Locked on Dean. His stomach roiled at the sight of what had been done to him, acid churning and bile climbing the back of his throat but he wouldn't do his brother the disservice or disrespect of turning away.

He'd been left there. Not for dead, but to die. Alone, and as slowly as possible, without any hope of rescue.

Just as Dean had always feared.

The Hollow Men had broken his body and abandoned his spirit to rot. The cruelest torture he could fathom his brother being subjected to. If Sam's sanity was a frayed hem, the sight of Dean hanging before him took hold of a loose thread and gave it a vicious yank.

He appeared just as lifeless as Paige's tone had warned, what skin was visible looking translucent where it wasn't patterned with grime and bruises and dried blood. His chin was dropped against the torn chest of his black t-shirt, face streaked with crimson stains trailing from a brutal mark at his left temple that betrayed the initial, surely incapacitating blow.

His t-shirt was impressively ripped, by claws or knives, or simply by the razor's edge of the Hollow Men's wrath and envy. By glass, maybe, Sam realized around a harsh intake of air as he tore his eyes away and spotted a few sizeable, jagged pieces of the broken windowpanes laying discarded and bloody along the floor. The dark pigment of the cotton concealed any easy sight of the blood brought forth by the corresponding slashes in his brother's skin, but Sam knew it was there.

He'd been strung up in the center of the room, equidistant from each wall and taking escape completely off of the table. A thick, coarse rope had been dropped from the steel beams bisecting the ceiling and fastened around his now-puffy, purpled wrists, also removing any useful movement from the equation. The left leg of his jeans was stiffened with a patch of dark, dried blood, and there was a small puddle of it pooled and congealing beneath where his bare, dirty feet seemed to blend into the shadows cast by his faintly swinging body, toes just grazing the cement. No room to gain even a whisper of traction or purchase; he'd have barely been able to fight back, and was certainly not allowed any opportunity to defend himself.

Dean didn't deserve such a thing. No one would.

Colin gave a respectful moment's pause at the top of the stairs before moving forward to assist Paige and Mark in cutting Dean down. There had been a somber, quiet kind of commotion in the room that Sam hadn't really been able to properly process until the man's sleeve brushed his arm as he passed, and then he was forced to take note of the presence of the others in the room who were there before him.

Forced to realize that Dean was gone, and Sam wasn't the first one there. There were hands on his brother, and he wanted to forget the need for control, to give in to the angry fire begging for release, to shout and yell and tell them to get the fuck away from Dean, Paige included. Instead, he stood rooted in place, and no one among them would meet his eyes.

They took care not to crowd Dean where he hung, and those that had taken it upon themselves to remove him were being reverential and overly gentle, and Sam had to assume it was a show being put on for his benefit. Taking in the sight before him, coupled with the remorseful finality of Paige's call, he couldn't possibly imagine that his broken brother was in any position to reap the benefits of the cautious support Colin and Mark were trying to lend his limp, bloodied limbs.

It shouldn't have been them; it should have been him. This was his job, and Sam could do that much for his stepped toward the center of the room, drawing glances from where Jacob and Amanda clung nervously to the perimeter.

Colin dragged a wicked four-inch blade from a leather sheath at his belt and made short work of the rope, and Sam made sure he was right there, taking hold of his cold, heavy brother to execute some sort of controlled drop to the floor. Dean's arms fell away stiffly as the rope gave, and while both of his wrists were angry and swollen around his restraints, his obviously broken left was a sickening hue of purple, and roughly the size of a grapefruit.

Sam's own joints ached in sympathy as he imagined the strain that had been put on the injury. Even taking into account Dean's significant tolerance for pain, that had to have hurt like hell, and he gritted his teeth until he was sure he can hear bone splintering inside his own head. There couldn't be much that was expected of him in that moment, as he was cradling his brother's lifeless and tortured body, but he couldn't fight the innate, inherited call of duty that begged for some sort of order or reassurance to be given to the others, that this loss wouldn't break them.

Sam was opening his mouth before he was struck with the realization that he wasthe only one needing such reassurance, because he was the only one who'd forgotten that it was never really destined to be a rescue operation. It was always expected to be one of recovery. His jaw snapped shut loudly and painfully, and he adjusted his grip around his brother's slack middle, doing a horrible job of convincing himself he wasn't feeling bone shift beneath his hands.

They'd almost gotten Dean laid horizontal when his left leg skipped against the cement and buckled in a sickeningly unnatural and nauseating way. He jerked suddenly in their grasp, cracked lips parting to suck in a harsh, desperate pull of air, rattling something inside of him before his mouth contorted into a sort of agonized, near-soundless howl that twisted Sam's insides and sent him to his knees next to his brother.

Who had decided to pull one over on them by being not quite as dead as they'd thought.

And that pretty much meant Paige was in charge from there on out. She fell to the floor and scooted under Dean's convulsing shoulders, dragging her bag closer. Without her face betraying any change, she switched gears in the blink of an eye, planted a hand on Sam's chest where he was hovering over his brother and gave him a firm shove away.

He fell back onto his hands and ass, heart thudding in his chest but otherwise feeling eerily calm given the situation. Like it didn't really matter what he felt, because it couldn't possibly be real. They were too late, and his brother was dead. He was trying to find a way to accept that, but the hoarse, frantic squawk escaping Dean's lips coupled with Paige's sudden urgency told him otherwise.

As it struck him that Dean was alive, it wasn't hope that surged through Sam's veins, or even relief. It was fear, and anger, because finding his brother mangled but dead would have been so much easier and more merciful than being forced to watch him struggle and suffer for a few moments or hours or days, only to perish anyway. Because Dean wasn't alive, he was alive for now. His body was a canvas painted with pain and damage, and that was just taking into account the injuries they could see. It was impossible to guess where Paige would begin, or how she would prod him in the direction of living for longer than the next ten minutes.

Sam's vision tunneled down to the sight of his brother fighting for air and writhing against Paige's legs, and the anxious voices of the others slid out focus until they were nothing more than muddy warbles of surprise and appall.

Paige stabilized Dean's jerking head with firm but gentle hands and barked an unintelligible order up at Colin, who stooped and snapped his knife through the rope binding his hands together. Another harsh, wet keening escaped Dean as he lost a short tussle with gravity and his forearms smacked against the unforgiving floor. It was a reflexive attempt at communicating the sheer amount of pain he was in, and the sort of lack of sound that came only in the aftermath of trauma, from prolonged screaming until abused vocal cords were pushed beyond the point of usefulness. He uttered no words, and had yet to show any real acknowledgement that he recognized the faces hovering over his head or that he even understood the torture was over.

Because it isn't, Sam thought morbidly, surveying the damage done to his brother and supplementing more injuries that he couldn't readily see. Maybe the torture was really just beginning.

Paige swiped the back of her wrist across her forehead and went to work, bypassed the scraps of rope sunk between the frigid, swollen flesh of Dean's hands and wrists and moved to gather what vitals she could. Which, as he nutted up and crawled back to his brother's side, Sam could deduce for himself were shit, as much in the basement as he himself had been just a few short moments before.

When Dean had stopped flailing enough for her to cut his shirt away, the bruises coloring his chest were nothing short of spectacular, accented by smears of blood and covering the spectrum from the yellowing, first-made mark to the last vicious strikes delivered before they left him there, blooming black and purple against jutting, clearly broken ribs.

He had yet to focus his eyes on any one of them and he was horribly white-faced, but he was moving about, sort of, stiffly and reactively. Paige met Sam's eyes over Dean's chest and he nodded. He reached out to take tentative hold of his brother's left arm, in a small patch of dirty but otherwise unmarred upper arm that might have actually been the only part of his body not currently hurting him.

Dean shuddered violently but didn't otherwise acknowledge his younger brother's touch or presence. He had been here awhile, dangerously long, exposed not only to the elements but also to the results of an emerging fury he wasn't responsible for and could never have anticipated coming back at him the way it had. His skin was icy against Sam's fingertips and he was a mess of dirt and blood and markings of violence, of obvious dislocations and strategically broken bones – the joint of his right shoulder was a strange though not unfamiliar lump, his ribcage shredded and blackened with bruises that screamed of all that had been wrenched and snapped beneath, and his left wrist and leg were nothing short of fucked.

Fuck, yeah, his leg. Sam's eyes lingered on the gruesomely twisted limb, which seemed to have undergone some degree of horrible, possibly irreparable damage. That much was easy enough to deduce even through the cover his blood-caked jeans.

Paige followed his gaze, narrowed her own eyes and ran sharp scissors up the left leg of Dean's filthy jeans with practiced precision, then carefully laid the slips of denim aside to expose the source of all that blood. The heel of his foot stuttered and skipped across the cement at her light touch, and her nose wrinkled apologetically as she laid the palm of her hand against Dean's forehead to steady him.

Sam swallowed roughly. Sitting there in full view of Dean's mangled leg and shattered shin bone, it was no wonder the pain of it had been enough to bring consciousness screaming back, and he couldn't imagine his brother ever walking again without a limp, regardless of what angelic healing might have been waiting for him at the bunker. Assuming, of course, that Dean had enough left in the tank to survive the ride back to Lebanon.

His fingers tightened around Dean's arm, the frigidness of his brother's tense, splayed form leaching in to pollute his own seemingly sluggish veins. "He's cold," Sam said, softly, as though it would bother Dean to hear such a report, and quite possibly only because he couldn't contain one more thought in his exhausted and overtaxed mind.

Grasping Dean's other wrist, Paige nodded curtly as she looked down at her watch, seeming intent but not panicked or frazzled. Professional, and capable, as though she had prepared for the worst a hell of a lot better than Sam himself had. "Touch of hypothermia – " Nonchalantly, like she was diagnosing a goddamned stomach bug – "but we're gonna leave him that way for now. He's already lost a lot of blood, and these cuts are old, but some might be deep enough to get right back to bleeding as soon as he warms up."

No shit he's lost a lot of blood, Sam mused morbidly. The room was painted with it. Cuts was perhaps too generous a word for the deep, horrific slashes that littered Dean's chest and abdomen through the filthy, tattered remnants of his black t-shirt. There was a particularly wicked-looking gash splitting the skin near his left shoulder and Sam resisted the urge to press the edges of the wound together himself, knowing his brother was no doubt already battling an infection on top of everything else he'd been left alone to contend with.

Dean had done them all a favor and passed out at some point during Paige's examination of his wounded chest, as any of his innumerable injuries sought to demand more attention than he could give. His pale face was thin and shadowed but slack, the lines of pain that had popped up like weeds when he'd come to having smoothed out. He looked dead, again, and only the ragged, uneven rise and fall of his bloody chest kept Sam from lurching forward and knocking her hands away from his brother, in hopes of granting him some final respite from this nightmare.

Paige had been through hell and back with them, and had developed a decent-enough ability to put up the wall when it was needed. But for one brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment as she gently placed Dean's right hand against the cold floor, she seemed uncharacteristically rocked, taking in the range of damage that had been done to someone she'd come to call a friend. "Okay," she said finally, to no one in particular.

"How the hell do we even move 'im?" Colin asked, tone of voice somewhere infuriatingly between shock and disgust.

Sam twisted and looked up at the man. He'd somehow managed to completely forget there was anyone else in the room with them, and his eyes executed a slow circuit of the darkened space, landing fleetingly on the gaze of each of the others.

"Extremely carefully." Paige sat back on her heels a moment and locked eyes with the former military man as she dug through the supplies in her bag by feel and memory. "There's a stretcher in the back of the Jeep. Get it."

Colin wasn't necessarily Dean's number one fan, and didn't usually take well to being on the receiving end of orders, but he responded with nothing more than a stiff nod as he moved swiftly back toward the staircase.

Dean started to rouse between them, some degree of consciousness making a slow reappearance due to persistent pain and unquestionable discomfort. Along with it, a rigidity returned to his limbs, the muscles beneath Sam's fingers tensing. Spurred by the movement and the strangled, unguarded noises coming from his brother as he arched off of the dirty floor, Sam's eyes were drawn back down. He hadn't slept in days, was dangerously over-caffeinated and on the verge of a total meltdown of either a physical or mental nature. And staring down at the strongest person he'd ever known lying broken, mangled and left alone to assume everyone he loves had given up him and then to finally give up on himself…it was flipping rage switches in Sam's brain the likes of which he hadn't flirted with activating in years.

Lock it up, he told himself, forcing his brother's strength as well as his voice behind the words, and do a job.

"Sam."

It took some work for Paige's voice to cut through the layers of stuffing Sam had mentally crammed into his ears, and by the time he slowly swiveled his head to meet her eyes, he knew it couldn't possibly be the first time she had tried to quietly get his attention.

"Sam," she repeated in a hushed, urgent tone, like they were sharing a secret over this ruined man, like everyone else wasn't straining to hear every word. "I need you to keep him calm while I get him stabilized, or he could hurt himself even more."

She had yet to speak Dean's name – none of them had – and Sam wondered briefly if that was some sort of coping mechanism they'd jointly adopted, whether it was designed for his benefit or her own. He supposed it made sense, that it would be easier to do the job when the job was a wrecked and bloody but nameless victim. Not a friend, or a brother.

"Sam."

By contrast, she couldn't seem to stop saying Sam's name. Calling him back, keeping him grounded. Trying to, anyway. He swallowed, nodded. "Yeah, okay. How?"

Already unwinding a thin line of tubing in preparation of inserting an IV line, Paige's eyes widened like he had thrown her a curve ball, and asked the most asinine of questions. "He's your brother, Sam. Just talk to him."

But even though his eyes were open again, Dean's pupils were blown wide and wouldn't focus, darting all over the room as he was seemingly lost in his own world of unrelenting agony and expecting further attack from any of the shadowed corners. He had yet to show any sort of sign that he was even aware of Sam's presence there with him, let alone that he was taking comfort in the sound of his voice.

So Sam broke the ice with a gentle swipe of the pad of his thumb across his brother's lightly bearded jawline. "Hey, man," he said shakily, to cover the soft pop of Paige's needle sliding beneath skin in the crook of Dean's right elbow.

He jerked at the invasion and Sam gripped him tighter, as firmly as he dared without hurting him further. "Hey, Dean. Look at me."

Dean's throat worked around another soundless protest of the activity around and concerning him, but he slowly, finally turned his head of his own accord and locked wide, panicked eyes with his little brother.

Sam bit down on the inside of his cheek, tried to smile. It didn't feel like a natural motion, and it was one he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to make again. "Found you," he said thickly. "Worst game of Hide and Seek ever, by the way."

Dean only blinked owlishly and released a stuttered, though somewhat calmed breath as his eyes drifted closed again. Hopefully feeling the effects of whatever Paige had gotten into him while he was distracted and Sam wasn't looking.

IV in place, she shifted her weight and reached across Dean's chest, gingerly lifting his left hand to inspect the injured joint. She frowned, hissed a short breath between her teeth. "These breaks in his wrist are old enough to leave be for now."

Dean flinched as she settled his broken hand lightly against his chest, but it was nothing compared to the thrashing from before. Sam warily eyed the bag of clear liquid by her side and the line taped down against his brother's arm. "What'd you give him?"

"Just acetaminophen, and a saline solution to combat the dehydration." Paige chewed her lower lip and fiddled with the tubing. "I've got stronger, but I can't give him much more for the pain before it'll compromise his breathing." And it pretty much went without saying, Dean's breathing was plenty compromised already. "I'll get him on some O2 as soon as we get him in the car, and then we'll…reevaluate," she said with a shake of her head and a sigh Sam couldn't readily translate or assign proper meaning to.

He digested the information, had accumulated enough self-taught medical know-how over the years to accurately assess that there hadn't been nearly enough work done to even put a dent in the amount of treatment and care his brother's current state required. Countless broken bones remained untreated, along with serious blood loss and internal injuries they wouldn't be able to identify here in this dark, damp building. All the same, Sam found himself dropping a quiet, half-hearted, "good."

Paige eyed him quizzically as Colin thumped back up the staircase, stretcher in tow. "No, not really. It's sort of a miracle that he isn't in shock."

Sam didn't correct her, but it wasn't a miracle, even if that was what he had asked for. It was just Dean. Because he bent and bent, but Sam had yet to witness Dean Winchester break. His big brother was a fierce force of stubborn nature who defied logic, reason, and sometimes biology. And he defied expectation, staying quiet and pliable and blessedly unconscious as they maneuvered his abused body atop the stretcher. Sam never broke contact, keeping fingers wrapped around the unnaturally cool skin of Dean's arm.

"He'll be okay," he said as they secured the wide straps around Dean as tightly as they dared, and tried to make it sound believable.

Paige made some sort of noise that was neither a scoff nor a laugh as she did a quick recheck of Dean's vitals, but it was definitely not a sound of agreement. "I've gotten him stabilized for now, but, Sam…"

"But what?"

"But this is bad." Eyes wide, she jerked her chin down at the bundled Dean. "He's lost a lot of blood, that leg is a mess, and I'll have to refracture his wrist before Castiel can heal begin to it. He's hypothermic and dehydrated, and there're signs he's got an infection attacking his organs, some of which are probably already lacerated or bruised. Sam, he's in bad shape, and there may not be any coming back from this. Physically, or…"

She was suggesting Dean's recovery wasn't in her hands, or even in Castiel's, but Dean's. Even worse, she was suggesting his brother wouldn't be able to fight through his injuries, or wouldn't want to, and Sam shook his head firmly, brushing off her assessment like he would a fly. "No, he'll be okay."

"Sam – "

"He'll be FINE, Paige," Sam gritted, because she hadn't been with them long enough to know that Dean was ALWAYSfine.

She narrowed her eyes, nodded reluctantly. "In any case, there's not much more I can do here, Sam. We need to get him back to Castiel, and we need to get him there fast."

"Then let's do it already," Sam said roughly. He motioned for Colin to assist him in lifting Dean's stretcher just as he noticed his brother showing signs of coming around again, too wounded and pained and just plain stubborn to stay down and out for long.

Paige noticed, too, and before Sam could get a good grip on the sturdy brace, she stopped him with a fistful of jacket sleeve clenched in her slender hand. "It doesn't matter how slowly we take this, Sam, the stairs are going to hurt him."

It felt like rubbing salt in the wound, and Sam didn't know why she was telling him. "Okay."

Paige tightened her grip on his arm. "If you can't keep him steady, then I don't want you anywhere near this thing."

They'd saved her, and she wanted more than anything to repay the favor. But she didn't know the rules. They weren't supposed to feel like they owed each other anything, and that was a superstition carried over from childhood. But with everything Dean had done for him, for everything he had sacrificed along the way, Sam felt the same tug, the same need to repay, and he could manage that much for his brother. Steady hands; that was easy enough. "I can do it."

Paige nodded and backed away. He and Colin lifted Dean between them and even though Sam knew it was coming, he was startled by the agonized rasp that escaped his brother as they stabilized his weight the best they could. I gotcha, he told Dean silently, a plea or a promise or a lie to both of them.

They took the stairs as slowly and gingerly as possible, and Paige followed alongside, gripping the IV bag because Dean's ribcage was so spontaneously littered with cracks and breaks she wouldn't dare inflict further torture by resting it atop his chest for even the short trip out to the Jeeps.

They'd been inside less than half an hour, yet somehow Sam's entire world had come unraveled.

Despite his assurances to Paige and himself, Sam felt it overtake him once more as they broke from the darkness of the warehouse into the Darkness of everything else. The horrible certainty of knowing that there would be no coming back from what had happened here, for either of them.

Those rage switches he had been flirting with went numb one at a time, leaving behind a sort of coldness Sam could feel as it slithered through his veins, shutting down each dark, weak corner of his mind and heart that had been brought to the brink. He had always believed in his brother's strength and ability to overcome, but the sight of Dean looking so vulnerable and defeated…he'd often wondered about that hit. The one there would be no coming back from.

The Hollow Men may have just dealt it.