Chapter 2

"affection seemed to have died under the bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves"

-George Elliot "Silas Marner"


"Bobby, it's Sam."

Dean gazed at his brother worriedly as Bobby answered.

"I don't know. We don't even know what we're hunting."

Dean grit his teeth at Bobby's response.

"No! It definitely wasn't something else. I just saw the patients, Sam looks just like them." except worse, Dean thought as he took in his brother's now sweaty forehead.

"I was gone for maybe two hours."

"I don't know. He's unconscious, got a fever, everything just like the victims."

Dean frowned, looking at his brother more closely.

"And a bite mark, a small one."

He walked back over to his little brother.

"Yeah, I can send you a picture."

"Yeah, thanks. Will do. Bye."

Dean hung up, kneeling next to the bed. He took a picture of the bite mark and proceeded to send it to Bobby. Shutting the phone, he took in the sight of his little brother. The fever seemed to have gotten worse in the last few minutes, and Sam was now tossing and turning on the bed, appendages jerking about. A small moan was torn from Sam's lips and he weakly muttered "no" under his breath.

Dean took in a deep breath, feeling overwhelmed. Things between him and Sam at the moment weren't at their best which made him hesitant about what to do. He looked at his brother's sick features and another moan sounded out, followed by what Dean could only call a whimper.

If this was a supernatural illness, there wasn't really anything Dean could do, right? Dean stared at his brother, feeling lost. His brother looked like the Sam he had left in that room with Lilith, the day he'd been dragged to Hell. Sam hadn't looked like this Sam for a long time. It made his heart constrict painfully and his head turn away from his suffering brother. He couldn't acknowledge that this was his Sam, not yet, because, if he did, that meant acknowledging that his little brother had literally ended the world.

Dean heard another small cry. Gritting his teeth, he glanced quickly at Sam before making a decision.

He headed over to where he had left his jacket and shoes. Pulling them on, he decided that the best thing he could do was hunt the monster down. With a guilty conscience, he left Sam thrashing on the bed in the throes of the supernatural sickness.


Dean headed to the house of the first victim. That had been where the man had collapsed. The house was more of a rundown apartment, overfilled with cars and in a part of town that was plagued by neglect. Dean dodged some kids on scooters and passed a garage where Banda music was playing from a radio while someone worked on their car. Stepping up to the door, Dean rapped on it. A few moments later a woman answered the door.

"Hi, I'm Agent Fleeman. I wanted to ask a few questions about Adriel Ruelas."

"Of course, come in," she replied, smiling weakly.

Dean stepped into the home, where the woman led him to a couch.

"I'm his wife, Esmeralda."

Dean smiled curtly and nodded. "Can you tell me what your husband was like before he collapsed?"

Esmeralda shook her head. "No, Adriel came home from work like usual. He was in the bedroom when I heard a thump. I didn't think anything of it. It wasn't until our daughter Lupita went in to talk to him that we realized something was wrong."

"Did he have a bite on him anywhere?"

Esmeralda frowned. "He did. On his hand, he had a bite on his hand. I assumed it was from one of his friends' dogs or something; it didn't look serious."

Dean nodded, filing away that tidbit for later.

"Was his behavior different at all before he collapsed? Did he act strange, or was he worried about something?"

Esmeralda immediately shook her head, but stopped suddenly. "Actually, he'd been worried about his AA meeting. Before we met, Adriel had been an alcoholic. We never talked about it, because when we met he was clean. But he was always terrified that he would have a relapse."

Dean was about to say something else when his phone rang. With an apologetic nod he stood up and walked several feet away before answering.

"You got anything, Bobby?"

Dean glanced over at Esmeralda who had started folding laundry and adding it to a stack that she must have been working on when Dean had knocked.

"How's Sam? I don't know, I left him to work on the case. I figured that if we gank the monster, we'll gank the illness." Dean didn't want to admit that he hadn't wanted to be near his brother.

Dean looked again at Esmeralda to see if she had heard what he'd said. She hadn't.

"Yes, I left him by himself."

"God, Bobby—yes, I'll go back. Just so you know, one of the other victims also had a bite mark."

Dean waited for Bobby to finish ranting before he snapped his phone shut. Walking back over to Mrs. Ruelas, he smiled.

"Thank you so much for your time, Mrs. Ruelas."

She smiled and showed him to the door. Before he stepped away though, she spoke.

"Agent Fleeman?"

Dean turned around, polite smile in place.

"Yes, Mrs. Ruelas?"

A strained look came over her face and she shifted.

"My husband, Adriel. He'll be alright?"

Dean always found these kind of questions difficult. How could he promise someone else's safety when he couldn't even take care of his own brother? He smiled tensely, stress lines forming in the upturn of his lips.

"We don't have much," she said with a small wave of her hand about the apartment,

"but we have each other. Adriel isn't a perfect man, no person is, but he loves us. And that's enough, isn't it?"

Dean thought about what she had said, that love was enough. It seemed cheesy, but looking around at the poor apartments and the weathered, but welcoming home of the woman before him, he felt a ring of truth to her words. Feeling emotion prickle in him, Dean just nodded, eyes cast down.

"We'll keep doing the best we can."

Her face fell a little but she still smiled kindly at him and nodded her head. "Thank you."

Dean nodded again and the door shut quietly. He hadn't deserved that "thank you."


Dean stepped through the motel room door to find Sam no longer on the bed. His heart began to thump as he took in the rumpled sheets and empty bed. Rushing over, he saw Sam on the floor, body still compared to how it had been when Dean had left him. Kneeling next to his brother's form, he took in the puddle of vomit that Sam was half-lying in and, even more disturbingly, the sight of blood spreading over his brother's head.

Dean turned his brother over and placed a hand against his forehead. The fever was still raging, and Sam seemed different– a bad different. Looking closely at his brother, Dean realized what the difference was. Sam had lost weight, muscle mass. That was impossible though; it took more than a day of being sick to lose weight, more than a week to lose as much as Sam had. Now, his brother looked less like a body builder and more like an average guy.

What to do. Dean grimaced at the soiled shirt and began tugging it off of his brother's limp form. Sam didn't mumble in protest, didn't even stir. Dean wished that his brother would be back to the tossing and turning mess he'd left, not the near-zombie he was now. Once the shirt was off, Dean awkwardly man-handled his brother back onto the bed and began to inspect the head wound. It was a small cut alongside a nasty bruise. He glanced at the corner of the side table and realized that Sam must have hurt his head falling off of the bed in his illness-induced shakes.

Guilt crept up on Dean, a silent stone in his gut. If he'd been there, stayed with Sam, his brother wouldn't have gotten hurt. As soon as the guilt blossomed, Dean shoved it down. He needed to solve the case first, people's lives depended on it. It wasn't like Sam had been hurt severely. Dean just needed to make sure Sam was settled better.

Dean wiped Sam's head off, clearing the blood away, and then quickly slapped on a bandage. He forewent putting Sam in another shirt and haphazardly tucked his brother into the blankets so if Sam thrashed around again, he wouldn't fall off. Dean grabbed the laptop and settled at the motel desk, mind setting itself back to the task of solving the case.

The only thing that he'd learned from the victim's wife was that the first victim had had the same bite as Sam. Dean would bet that if he checked the other coma patients he would find similar bites. But a bite mark didn't mean much. It told Dean little about the monster, and definitely didn't tell him how he could kill it or cure the sickness. Dean looked back at his brother and felt worry niggle at him. He pushed it aside; emotions had never helped much in the way of solving a case.

Dean needed to do some more legwork and see if he could find any other connections between the victims. That, or sit on his ass watching Sam while he waited for Bobby to get back to him.

Dean let out a heavy sigh and rubbed his hands anxiously on his pants. Getting up, he quickly changed back into the suit. He was going to hit up the hospital again, see if he could question more people.


"Can you tell me what your dad was like before he collapsed?"

Dean had headed to the hospital and gone to the victims' rooms. He checked all of the victims and wasn't surprised to find a bite mark on all of them in various places. He had been lucky enough to find the young woman in front of him visiting one of the patients, her father.

The young woman in front of him wasn't like the usual, perfectly-built women he met in most of his cases. She was overweight, with a small nose and eyes that were too close together. Ugly glasses that were too big for her face clung to the end of her nose, and she was clad in dumpy clothing that only accentuated her mussy hair.

"Umm...I don't... he was like normal, I guess."

She shrugged, eyes cast to the side nervously.

"Are you sure? Was anything different about him, anything at all?"

She lifted her shoulders again, fingers twined in the fabric of her jacket.

"He was upset a little."

"Upset?"

She shrugged again, the movement obviously a nervous habit.

"He'd met one of his old friends, the ones he had back when he was a teenager. He used to be in the local gang. He got out before he met my mom but he was always terrified that his past would come back to get him. Meeting his friend scared him."

The girl was in her early twenties and worked at the local La Princesa. Dean nodded his response and studied her. She was obviously uncomfortable around him and he realized that what he'd gotten was probably the best he was going to get out of her. But something about what she had said struck him as important.

He had done research on some of the other victims. One of them had been a teenage boy, one whose father had just gotten out of jail. The father had been in jail for domestic abuse and the boy had been the one to report his father. Dean had a feeling that the boy had probably been terrified of his father getting out. So far, all the victims had something they were afraid of. Thinking of Sam, it made sense. The end of the world seemed like a good enough thing to be afraid of. But something about that felt wrong; Sam wasn't one to scare easily and, if anything, Sam was worried over the apocalypse, not afraid.

This seemed like an important clue, a creature that was involved with fear in some way. Dean thanked the girl for her time and got up, heading out of the hospital and back to the motel room.

Dean pulled out his phone and dialed Bobby.

"Hey, Bobby, it's Dean. I got more intel on the thing we're dealing with–"

"Yes, Bobby, I left Sam in the room. He's getting worse."

"Well, the case isn't going to get solved without me going out and working."

"He got worse."

"What do you mean 'balls'?! Do you know what this is?"

"Well, that's reassuring. I have more information about the creature. At least, I think I have more information. All the victims so far had a major fear that had been brought up when they were attacked or collapsed or whatever."

"Yes, that's all I have."

"I can't do anything for Sam while he's out with this sickness. Until we know what the monster is we can't treat it."

"I am taking this seriously."

"Of course I care about Sam, I just–"

"Whatever Bobby, I'm not doing this shit right now."

Dean snapped the phone shut, cutting off the sound of Bobby's voice still yelling through the receiver. He pulled up in front of the motel room, nerves on end from the conversation with Bobby. Bobby seemed to think that he needed to have a heart-to-heart with Sam, that "they hadn't been right" recently. It was a bunch of crap, since he and Sam were fine. As soon as he thought that, his stomach sunk. It was so obvious he was lying to himself. Letting out a deep sigh, Dean climbed out of the Impala. The world was ending– it was as simple as that. They didn't have time to worry about their emotions or whether everything was "alright" between them. All that mattered was stopping the world from (literally) ending.

Dean entered the motel room, relieved that, this time, Sam was on the bed like he was supposed to be. He shucked off his jacket again and walked over to his brother. The sight of him made Dean stop in his tracks. Sam looked unbelievably worse. His face was thinned and gaunt, skin sallow and clammy. Pulling the blankets back Dean was shocked to see that his brother's entire body was in a similar state. Drawn and thin, so unlike Sam's body had been just an hour ago. Panic finally started to settle in Dean, because whatever the monster was doing, it was killing his brother faster than any of the other patients