Argh, so I had just updated my profile saying that I'm alive and all that, then I go and disappear for two weeks. So sorry for the wait! I actually do plan to write more often now, particularly now that I'm getting more toward the parts of the story where stuff actually happens and all that. This chapter in particular was a bit difficult to make myself write because not a lot actually happens (sorry in advance for that). But starting in the next one (actually toward the end of the next one), actual stuff will happen, I promise! I couldn't just skip this chapter, though. No. I don't do that. I won't be one of those people who just does the "okay then it's suddenly two weeks later because I didn't feel like writing about the time in between even though up until now my story has been set at one pace and now I'm going to throw the entire thing off." No. So anyway, enjoy, and I promise not to make you wait as long for the next chapter!
It wasn't far to the Men of Letters Bunker, and Dean made the drive in half the time it should have taken, but it still felt like an eternity. Dean could feel Sam shuddering in his lap, and hear the shallow, rasping breaths he was taking. Dean tended to talk when he was nervous, and he rambled consistently as they drove, but Sam didn't acknowledge anything he said, didn't even reach up to flap at Dean with overlarge hands, trying to get him to shut up.
When they reached the bunker, Dean once again had to shove aside his instinctual desire not to leave Sam alone. In this case, there was no option: he couldn't get Sam inside on his own, at least not easily and certainly not without causing his brother undue agony—he would need Kevin's help for that. To get Kevin, he would need to go inside the bunker, and there was no way in Hell he was going to leave Crowley in the car with Sam.
The demon had been surprisingly cooperative on the ride back, making small noises occasionally when Dean rounded a corner too fast, tires squealing, and threw the chained form in the backseat into the door. Other than that he had been silent, and Dean was as grateful as he could be to the King of Hell.
Dean was also aware that Sam hadn't finished the ritual, that Crowley wasn't human, and that he could at any time revert back to being the demonic son of a bitch he was. Despite his worry for his brother, and the urgent need to get Sam back in the bunker and take care of him immediately, Dean was not stupid: he knew certain precautions needed to be taken.
No matter when he would turn demon again, for now, Crowley was mostly human, and that meant his senses were about at a human level too. Luckily, as Dean hadn't bothered to cover his eyes before leaving the chapel, the demon had been lying down at an awkward angle in the backseat for most of the ride, and hadn't been able to see out the windows. Dean wanted to keep as much information from Crowley as possible about the location of the bunker.
Yanking open the back door of the Impala, Dean saw that Crowley was struggling to sit up, half-propped on chained elbows and starting to raise his head. One of Sam's bags was on the floor in the back, and Dean quickly grabbed an old shirt to tie across Crowley's eyes.
Crowley groaned slightly in annoyance as Dean reached forward to do so. "Really, Squirrel? Is that necessary?"
"Shut up," countered Dean, aware that Crowley had reverted to nicknames and fearing that Sam's purified blood was already wearing off, turning him more demonic by the minute.
After double-checking the shirt, making sure Crowley couldn't see a thing, he hauled the demon out of the car and to his feet. Dean pulled him along and down the steps to the door of the bunker. Crowley stumbled on the steps but Dean's mercilessly tight grip on his upper arm kept him from falling.
Dean unlocked the door with one hand and shoved the chained demon inside, closing the door behind him but not locking it as usual—he didn't plan to be gone long and locking the door seemed to put an unwanted barrier between himself and Sam. Turning back, he was met with a blaring alarm, and looking down, he noted that the dormant machines in the main room were all blinking, whirring, and beeping, pointlessly alerting him to the fact that all Hell—or Heaven—was breaking loose outside.
Without pausing to do anything about them, Dean steered Crowley down the steps, around corners, through hallways, and down to the recently discovered Room 7B. As he opened the door to the dungeon, he heard new sounds in the room above, a distant voice, and figured Kevin was up there looking for him. He considered shouting back but realized there was no need to inform Crowley that he knew where Kevin was hiding, and finished re-chaining the demon into one of the sets of shackles along the wall, not bothering to take off the blindfold, before retreating and slamming the door behind him.
Climbing back up to the main level, Dean found Kevin emerging from the hallway leading to their bedrooms with a shotgun, held in slightly shaking hands. Kevin lowered it slightly when he saw Dean, and Dean recognized it as one of the guns he had mounted on the wall of his room.
Dean snorted, moving forward and shoving the barrel of the gun toward the floor. "What were you gonna do, huh? There's no ammo in that thing." He took it from Kevin's limp grasp and tossed it to the floor beside them.
"I-I don't know, it- it might have scared…" Kevin stammered, looking down at the gun on the floor and then back up at Dean. "Everything started going off in here, all these alarms and lights and—" Kevin's eyes darted around nervously and his voice started to rise. "What the hell is happening out there?"
"Hey!" Dean barked into the young man's face, and Kevin flinched, quieting and looking up at the hunter, who grabbed his arm and started back toward the stairs to the balcony and the entrance. "I'll explain in a minute, but I need your help with Sam. Come on."
Kevin hurried after him up the stairs. "What's wrong with Sam?" He asked, but Dean ignored him, reaching the door and pulling it open.
Kevin followed him through and made to shut the door, but Dean stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Leave it open," he said grimly, and started back toward the car, just as the ground shook again with the impact of another fallen angel.
Kevin gasped and started violently, his head snapping toward the sky. He stopped in his tracks, staring. "What the hell is that?" He asked quietly.
Dean stomped back to him and grabbed his arm once again, pulling him toward the Impala. "Angels. Now come on."
"Angels?" Kevin asked incredulously, but he still followed Dean to the car at last, gasping again when he saw Sam lying across the front seat. "What happened?"
Dean ignored him again, pulling open the passenger door and leaning inside to pull Sam upright. As he shifted his brother against his chest, Kevin started again, suddenly peering into the backseat and around the car. "What… What happened to Crowley? You guys got the tablets, right? You were going to trick him? Where is he? What happened? Where—"
"He's inside!" Dean snapped, stopping the incessant questions. He started pulling Sam toward the edge of the seat, gesturing to Kevin to help him, but Kevin's eyes were widening and he took a step back as though Dean had just proclaimed himself a demon.
"Inside?" Kevin's voice rose a few octaves as he looked wildly back at the open door of the bunker. "He's in there?"
"Yes, chained to the wall and blindfolded in the dungeon!" Dean yelled, losing patience, as his sick brother lay limply against his side. He forced his voice lower, imploring, and Kevin finally looked back at him, clearly terrified. "He's not going anywhere, Kev, he's still weak from the ritual. Trust me. Please, I need your help here."
Kevin shook his head and wrapped his arms around himself briefly, but finally moved back to Dean. "Yeah, okay. Sorry."
Dean gave a tired, strained sort of smile. "It's fine, man, I know it's all—just help me get Sam inside, let me take care of him, and we can talk later, okay?"
Kevin nodded and moved forward again; Dean shifted, pulling Sam's upper body out of the car, holding him below the arms. "Get his legs," he said shortly, and Kevin's hands scooped under Sam's knees as they were pulled free of the Impala.
Dean closed the car door with his foot, and they started moving back toward the open door of the bunker, Sam a long, awkward weight between them. They had to set him down for a moment inside so that Kevin could bolt the door shut behind them, and when they moved to pick him up again, Dean noticed Sam stirring slightly. He held up a hand as Kevin reached down for Sam's feet again, staring intently at his brother's face, but other than a very soft moan and a slight tightening of his features, Sam remained still and unconscious.
Sighing, Dean once again slipped his hands under Sam's back, Kevin following up with his legs. As they hoisted him up again, Dean felt the muscles in Sam's shoulders tighten, but he still didn't respond, and they began moving backward toward the stairs.
Getting Sam down the curving stairs was the hardest part of the journey, but they managed it eventually, and after that, it wasn't too long a trek to the younger hunter's bedroom. Dean hadn't been in Sam's room more than a few times, but he noticed that his younger brother hadn't added any real personal touches to it; hadn't put anything on the walls, didn't even have a photo like Dean… but then, what would he have a photo of? There were very few pictures of Sam and Dean together, and most of those of their family had burnt down with their house in Lawrence. John hadn't exactly been the picture-taking type after Mary died. And Sam wasn't even in most of the ones from when they were all together. The thought suddenly made Dean's stomach twist.
They laid Sam down as gently as possible on his bed. Dean's eyes remained locked on his brother's face, and he distantly heard Kevin leaving the room to get the first aid kit. Dean was focused entirely on Sam, lost in memories of their less-than-happy childhood and suddenly drowning in the realization that while Dean liked to look back on the happy memories, always looking to the future and hoping it could be like them, Sam had nothing to draw on. His brother's entire life had been one misery after another, and he didn't have any happy memories, at least not any real, solid, permanent ones, to think about in the worst of times.
A memory came back to him, of a time, quite a while ago, that he should have realized all this. I never got the crusts cut off my PB&J. I just don't look at family the way you do. Dean felt sick. He should have seen, then, that Sam was right: to Sam, "family" just meant an obligation that would someday cost his life; it meant obeying the orders of his distant father and hearing the tales of the mother he never knew. Sam's words in the chapel came back to him. You want to know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? Was how many times I let you down. I can't do that again. Sam had grown up and lived his entire life patterned on Dean, trying his hardest to do what he thought Dean wanted, striving to create the future that Dean saw, with no idea for himself of what happiness looked like. And he blamed himself for the fact that things went wrong, that Dean was still clinging onto old memories and wishing for his mother back.
Before the burning behind his eyes could develop into full-fledged tears, Dean leaned down and pressed his forehead against Sam's barely-moving chest, gripping Sam's shirt so tightly that he could feel his nails digging into his palms even through the material.
"Sammy," he whispered, and his voice broke in a near-sob, "Jesus…"
Okay, so this kind of near-breakdown isn't really meant to be an out-of-character thing. Everyone has their small moments where they just can't deal with stuff. But with Sam sick and hurt and all that, I figure Dean would be feeling a bit strained, not to mention the angels falling and Crowley in the basement and the fact that his brother essentially wanted to commit suicide earlier that night. I also needed to start the whole premise of Dean showing his emotions a little more, and bring up a reason for him to be actually talking to Sam later. I promise, there's not going to be any Dean-sobbing-to-Sam-about-their-childhood scenes. That would just be totally wrong. Oh, and yeah haha I know it's a slightly awkward ending, I just couldn't think of anything more that Dean would actually say in his one little weak moment. It's not like he would go on a big emotional speech or anything, and saying "I'm sorry" wouldn't really fit, for multiple reasons, which I don't need to waste your time by making you read here.
Also, I'm sorry for the general lack of actual plot in this chapter. I couldn't just skip the entire part where Dean brings Sam back, chains up Crowley, etc., and get to the better parts. The next couple of chapters are going to be somewhat slower-paced as well, though the Destiel shall come in somewhat soon. After that, things will actually start to happen, as I test out my powers of prediction on what the trials may or may not have done to Sam, what the hell is going to happen to all the fallen angels, what they'll do about Crowley and the demons, etc. So do keep reading!
One last sidenote: Word does not recognize the word Impala. I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.
